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Attention

Drone incident confirms US involvement in Ukraine conflict - Russia


RT
Wed, 15 Mar 2023 17:43 UTC
MQ-9 Reaper drone
© Getty Images / John MooreAn MQ-9 Reaper drone with US Customs and Border Protection
Moscow will attempt to recover the wreckage of the American MQ-9 Reaper drone that fell into the Black Sea on Tuesday, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, has announced.

Speaking live on federal broadcaster Rossiya 1 on Wednesday, the official admitted that he doesn't know if it will be possible to reach to the remains of the UAV but stressed that it was important to make an effort to find and study the wreckage.

Patrushev also added that "Americans keep saying that they are not participating in the hostilities" in Ukraine and that this latest incident with the drone is "yet another confirmation that [the US] are directly involved" in the ongoing military conflict.

The secretary's statement comes after Washington's European Command (EUCOM) reported that one of its MQ-9 Reaper drones was brought down over the Black Sea on Tuesday morning as a result of "unsafe and unprofessional" actions by two Russian Su-27 fighter jets. The Pentagon insists that one of the Russian interceptors had "struck the propeller" of the drone while it was conducting a reconnaissance mission in international airspace.

Comment: Naturally, the US finds a reason to incite more conflict:
Via RT

Russia's ambassador to the US has accused Senator Lindsey Graham of trying to provoke a "dangerous escalation" between the two countries, after the senior lawmaker urged the Pentagon to fire on Russian fighter jets.

Asked about Graham's comments on Wednesday, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said the senator's call to shoot down Russian aircraft went "far beyond common sense" and risked all-out war between the world's largest nuclear powers.

[...]

Graham appeared on Fox News earlier on Wednesday to discuss a recent close encounter between Russian fighter jets and a US MQ-9 Reaper drone near Crimea, calling for a tough response from President Joe Biden after the UAV was sent plunging into the Black Sea.

"What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down, if they were threatening our assets," Graham told the outlet, referring to the US leader who served at the height of Cold War brinkmanship with the Soviet Union.

[...]

Washington has flown drones and surveillance craft near the Russian border on a near-constant basis over the last year, providing intelligence - along with weapons, ammunition and money - to the Ukrainian government even as it insists it is not a party to the conflict. The exact location of this week's drone encounter was not confirmed by either government, though Russian news outlets have reported that the Reaper's last location was about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
Despite violating airspace, the US will continue to do whatever it wants:
Via RT

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu, on Wednesday, for the first time in months, to discuss the incident in which an American spy drone went down in the Black Sea waters off Crimea.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Shoigu told Austin that the incident was caused by the Americans violating the airspace restriction declared by Russia, with all the proper international notifications in place. Shoigu called US drone flights off the Russian coast "provocative in nature" and risked an escalation of tensions in the Black Sea.

While Russia does not desire such a development, it will "continue to respond proportionately to all provocations," Shoigu said. He added that the two nuclear powers "must act as responsibly as possible," which includes keeping a military channel open to discuss any crisis.

Speaking at a Pentagon press briefing, Austin confirmed that he made the call, and said it was "important that great powers be models of transparency and communication." However, he insisted the US would "continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows."
... and wherever international law does not allow.

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Newspaper

Armenia raises fears of Azerbaijan escalation in area overseen by Russian peacekeepers with Putin


France 24
Tue, 14 Mar 2023 13:36 UTC
Pashinyan
© Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin viaFILE PHOTO: Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan speaks during a news conference following a meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev to discuss the implementation of the ceasefire over Nagorno-Karabakh reached on November 9 and measures to solve problems in the region, in Moscow, Russia January 11, 2021.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Tuesday he had complained to President Vladimir Putin about "problems" with Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh, warning of an escalation in the restive Caucasus region.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars for control of the Armenian-majority region and the latest conflict in 2020 ended with the deployment of Moscow's forces.

Pashinyan's comments are the latest sign that Armenia, which relies on Russia as a security guarantor, is growing frustrated with the Kremlin whose attention is focused on Ukraine and confrontation with the West.

Comment: See also: Jewel of the Caucasus: Why Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to fight over Nagorno-Karabakh

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Cardboard Box

Bail outs: Credit Suisse 'borrows' $54 billion, major US banks rescue First Republic with $30 billion 'injection'

Pete Schroeder
Reuters
Thu, 16 Mar 2023 23:13 UTC
Credit Suisse
© REUTERS/Eduardo MunozA man walks near Credit Suisse bank headquarters in New York City, U.S., March 15, 2023.
Large U.S. banks injected $30 billion in deposits into First Republic Bank (FRC.N) on Thursday, swooping in to rescue the lender caught up in a widening crisis triggered by the collapse of two other mid-size U.S. lenders over the past week.

Banking stocks globally have been battered since Silicon Valley Bank collapsed last week due to bond-related losses that piled up when interest rates surged last year, raising questions about what else might be lurking in the wider banking system.

Within days, the market turmoil had ensnared Swiss lender Credit Suisse (CSGN.S), forcing it to borrow up to $54 billion from Switzerland's central bank to shore up liquidity.
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Bizarro Earth

US banking crisis poses global threat, former Treasury official tells RT


RT
Wed, 15 Mar 2023 13:05 UTC
Roberts
© Logicno/Alexandra Citrin-Safadi/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/KJNPaul Craig Roberts
Contagion could spread to Europe and beyond, Paul Craig Roberts warns...

The policies of the US Federal Reserve are responsible for the unfolding banking crisis and could lead to more failures in the sector, Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy Paul Craig Roberts believes.

The official, who served in the US Treasury in the 1980s, talked to RT about the recent high-profile bank failures that have rattled the US financial system and the potential fallout of those events.
"For many years, the Federal Reserve kept the rates very low, so the interest on the financial assets that the banks have on their balance sheet is low. When the rates start rising, the values of their portfolios fall, but their liabilities don't.

"The Fed's policy of high interest rates pushes the banks into insolvency. And this is the cause of the problem. If the Fed continues raising interest rates, there will be more failures."

Comment: We can thank lynchpin Powell for creating the crisis, who now solely determines the financial future of the USA and a potential rollout of global repercussions.

See also:

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Attention

Seymour Hersh warns of potential US plan B in Ukraine


RT
Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:25 UTC
Uk Soldiers
© Anatolii Stepanov/AFPUkrainian soldiers sit on a armoured personnel carrier on their way to the frontline on September 21, 2022.
Washington could clash with Moscow's forces if Kiev starts to lose, the veteran journalist argues...

The US could get directly involved in the Ukraine conflict if it sees that Kiev's forces are on the back foot, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh suggested on Tuesday.

Speaking at an event in Washington, DC hosted by the Committee for the Republic, a non-profit organization, Hersh noted that the US "did stupid things" during the Vietnam War, and suggested that Washington could "start doing something else" in the Ukraine conflict.

"I don't know what happens if it goes bad for Ukraine, you have all this manpower," he said, pointing out that the US has dispatched units of its 82nd and 101st elite airborne divisions close to the Ukrainian border, while "a lot of weapons and arms are coming" to Europe.
"I'm told the game is going to be: this is NATO, we are supporting NATO in offensive operations against the Russians, which is not going to fool the world... It's us fighting Russia."

Comment: See also:

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X

Credit Suisse sheds nearly 25%, key backer says no more money


Fox Business
Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:00 UTC
bank
© Fabrice Coffrini/AFPSwiss central bank Credit Suisse
Saudi lender acquired a stake of almost 10% in Credit Suisse last year...

Credit Suisse lost almost a quarter of its value on Wednesday, dropping to a new record low after its largest investor said it could not provide the Swiss bank with more financial assistance.

"We cannot, because we would go above 10%. It's a regulatory issue," Saudi National Bank chairman Ammar Al Khudairy said on Wednesday.

The Saudi lender acquired a stake of almost 10% last year after taking part in Credit Suisse's capital raising and committed to investing up to 1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.5 billion).


Comment: 'Trending': A financial pandemic

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People 2

Biden says efforts to restrict transgender rights 'close to sinful'

Kevin Liptak
CNN
Mon, 13 Mar 2023 11:34 UTC
biden daily show
© Comedy Central's The Daily Show
President Joe Biden called efforts to restrict transgender rights in Florida "close to sinful" in an interview released Monday, suggesting federal laws should be passed to protect those rights in all states.

"What's going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. It's just terrible what they're doing," Biden said during an interview with Kal Penn for "The Daily Show."

Biden's comments came as an unprecedented number of measures are introduced in state legislatures this year that are seeking to restrict LGBTQ rights. The proposed bills cover a wide range of policies, including some that seek to restrict transgender people from competing on sports teams or using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

Comment: Biden may try to ret-con his views, but we all know who he used to be.

See also:

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Info

The desert of the real; Russia's SMO a year later

Hanna Eid
Al Mayadeen
Tue, 14 Mar 2023 23:56 UTC
russia collage
Alexander Dugin argues that the conflict has transformed from a limited SMO into a full-scale conflict against the unipolar neoliberal world order.

One year into the Russian special military operation (SMO), Alexander Dugin argues that the conflict has transformed from a limited SMO into a full-scale conflict against the unipolar neoliberal world order. According to Dugin, the miscalculations which shifted the course of the war came early and were only reacted to later: "[t]he Kremlin probably did not take into account either the psychological readiness of the Ukrainian Nazis to fight to the last Ukrainian, or the scale of Western military aid." From my perspective here in the United States, I was aware of the Nazi presence in the Maidan coup since 2014, as were a good many others. Yet, what caught me off guard was the complete, total/totalizing, and in fact uncritical acceptance that Ukraine=Humanity and Russia=Barbarism. I wrote about this in the early days of the special military operation and reflected on the media's acceptance of this binary message. Upon reflection, I see this as the outcome of the liberal spy novel fantasy/RICO case called 'Russiagate' and the insistence that Russia has interfered in a series of American elections.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

Interfering in Elections? Israel uses high-technology to influence results

Philip Giraldi
The Unz Review
Tue, 14 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
Israel uses high-technology
A week ago an interesting story surfaced briefly in the news about how the developing Republican presidential candidate bids by Nikki Haley and others had been attacked over the past eleven months by possibly as many as hundreds of thousands of false automated personas, referred to in the trade as "bots," on Twitter and other internet based social media. Interestingly, the activity was discovered and shared with Associated Press by an Israeli internet security company called Cyabra, which also claimed that the "bots" generation seem to have originated in three separate networks of false Twitter accounts. The accounts appear to have been created in the United States and it is believed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications are increasingly being used to create completely lifelike fake personas, extremely difficult for security filters and censors to detect.

The article claimed that those thousands of electronically generated non-persons had been programmed to disparage Haley and Ron DeSantis and others, often using "fake news" or alleged leaks of embarrassing personal information, while also praising the virtues of Donald Trump. The apparent intention was to build popular support for Trump by exploiting the social media sites' algorithms to reach a large audience at the expense of the other possible GOP candidates. There are also concerns among some Republicans that the effort to give life to the Trump campaign by materially impacting on online political discussion might possibly be orchestrated and paid for by major outside interests that could actually be either foreign or criminal. Of course, as the operation has been exposed by an Israeli company, the possibility exists that the story is itself at least in part a false flag to plausibly deny any involvement by the Jewish state if that were to be demonstrable.
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Eye 1

CIA and Mossad-linked surveillance system quietly being installed throughout the US

Whitney Webb
Unlimited Hangout
Fri, 10 Mar 2023 00:00 UTC
Protected by Gabriel
Under the guise of stopping mass shootings, a surveillance system backed by top Mossad, CIA and FBI officials is being installed in schools, houses of worship, and other civilian locations throughout the country, much of it thanks to the recent donation of an "anonymous philanthropist."

Launched in 2016 in response to a Tel Aviv shooting and the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, Gabriel offers a suite of surveillance products for "security and safety" incidents at "so-called soft targets and communal spaces, including schools, community centers, synagogues and churches." The company makes the lofty promise that its products "stop mass shootings." According to a 2018 report on Gabriel published in the Jerusalem Post, there were an estimated 475,000 such "soft targets" across the U.S., meaning that "the potential market for Gabriel is huge."

Gabriel, since its founding, has been backed by "an impressive group of leaders," mainly "former leaders of Mossad, Shin Bet [Israel's domestic intelligence agency], FBI and CIA." In recent years, even more former leaders of Israeli and American intelligence agencies have found their way onto Gabriel's advisory board and have promoted the company's products.
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