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Lula launches presidential campaign to 'rebuild Brazil', calls Bolsonaro administration 'criminal'


South China Morning Post
Sun, 08 May 2022 10:04 UTC
Lula
© AFPFormer President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva launched his campaign for a new presidential term on Saturday, vowing to rebuild Brazil after what he called the "irresponsible and criminal" administration of far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.

The campaign launch sealed a remarkable political comeback for Lula (2003-2010), four years after the 76-year-old leftist icon was jailed on controversial corruption charges. The charismatic but tarnished steelworker-turned-politician told a rally in Sao Paulo, standing before a giant Brazilian flag:
"We're ready to work not only to win the election on October 2, but to rebuild and transform Brazil, which will be even more difficult."
Speaking in his trademark gravelly voice, he said Bolsonaro - whom he did not mention by name - had made Brazil a "pariah" with polarising policies, attacks on democratic institutions and surging destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
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Windsock

UK weighs in on Ukraine's chances against Russia


RT
Mon, 09 May 2022 11:43 UTC
Wallace
© EPAUK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace
Britain's defense secretary has expressed belief that Ukraine, which is being supplied with weapons by the UK and other Western nations, is capable of achieving military victory in its conflict with Russia.

During a speech at the National Army Museum in London on Monday, Ben Wallace said:
"It is very possible that Ukraine will break the Russian army to the extent that they either have to go back to pre-February or they have to effectively fold in on itself. Putin must come to terms with how he's lost in the long run, and he's absolutely lost. Russia is not what it was."
Wallace appears to be more optimistic about the events on the ground than some officials in Kiev. On Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelensky's adviser, Alexey Arestovich, acknowledged that it was currently impossible for Ukraine to reverse the situation on the frontline.

With the effects of international sanctions against Moscow not being felt yet and the West taking too long to approve the deliveries of weapons needed by the Ukrainian military, a new Russian offensive on key cities, including the capital Kiev, can be expected, he warned.

Comment: When delusions speak louder than truth - plug your ears!!!

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Arrow Down

Gallagher: US 'running low' on weapons after supplying Ukraine

Trent Baker
Breitbart
Fri, 06 May 2022 00:00 UTC
zelensky
© file photoUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy observes US-supplied Javelin missiles.
House Armed Services Committee member Mike Gallagher (R-WI) on Friday warned that the United States was "running low" on its weapons stockpiles after helping Ukraine defend itself from Russia's attack.

According to Gallagher, the United States has burned through seven years' worth of weapons in assisting Ukraine. He told Fox News Channel's America's Newsroom that this was important because Taiwan also needed help dealing with Chinese aggression.


Comment: MIC on the job: $$$ Lockheed Martin bumps up war machine production:
Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet said on Sunday that his company would nearly double production of their Javelin missiles as the U.S. sends hundreds of the weapons to aid Ukraine's resistance against Russia's invasion. Taiclet, on CBS's Face the Nation, said:
"​​Right now, our capacity is 2,100 Javelin missiles per year. We're endeavoring to take that up to 4,000 per year, and that will take a number of months, maybe even a couple of years to get there because we have to get our supply chain to also crank up. We're starting now to ramp it up because we have an active production line right now that the president saw."
He referenced President Biden's recent trip to a Lockheed Martin facility in Troy, Ala.
"So we can start turning up the heat now and ramping the production immediately because of those circumstances. The war in Ukraine has highlighted a couple of really important things for us, including the need to have superior systems in large enough numbers to meet demand and control of the airspace."
The U.S. government has been looking to defense contractors to backfill the military's supply of weapons so the U.S. can continue to ensure Ukraine can defend itself against Moscow's forces.

Last week, the Pentagon moved $1.45 billion to the Army and Marine Corps to restock Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that the U.S. sent to Ukraine.


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Attention

The Rise of the New Normal Reich

CJ Hopkins
Off-Guardian
Mon, 09 May 2022 17:19 UTC
Nazi Mask
© Off-Guardian
I told you this part wasn't going to be pretty. I didn't think it would get to the point where the Wall Street Journal would go full Buck Turgidson and call on the United States to "show it can win a nuclear war," but I wasn't entirely off the mark either.

Back in January (i.e., a million years ago), in The Last Days of the Covidian Cult, I wrote:
...we are getting dangerously close to the point where GloboCap will need to go full-blown fascist if they want to finish what they started. If that happens, things are going to get very ugly. I know, things are already ugly, but I'm talking a whole different kind of ugly. Think Jonestown, or Hitler's final days in the bunker, or the last few months of the Manson Family."
I don't know about you, but I kind of feel like the threat of global thermonuclear war qualifies as a "different kind of ugly." And, OK, before you accuse me of exaggerating the danger of the ungodly mess that GloboCap has made in the Ukraine, I'd like to point out that even Thomas Friedman is starting to sound the alarm.

Thomas fucking Friedman, folks ... a man with no moral conscience whatsoever, who has never met a GloboCap war of aggression that he could not support, and who has justified the gratuitous barbecuing of millions of men, women, and children without so much as a second thought throughout his long and lucrative career as an A-List mouthpiece for the ruling classes. When The Stash gets nervous, I start to get nervous.

Also, there's the GloboCap Nazi thing. I'm not exactly a hothouse flower, but I have to admit that watching my liberal friends and colleagues go goo-goo for actual swastika-tattooed, Sieg-heiling Nazis has rattled my nerves a little bit. OK ... I'm sorry, we're not allowed to call them "Nazis." I believe "defenders" is the term du jour.

Seriously, here's an actual screenshot from The Guardian featuring the leader of the neo-Nazi Azov Detachment...

Nazi Commander
© The Guardian
Oh, and meanwhile, as the rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem, and the former fanatical Covidian Cultists turned fanatical Ukrainian Cultists scream for "more weapons" and "more direct engagement," and revel in their anguish for the wives of neo-Nazis, the official history of the 2020-2021 Covid pandemic is being written and the actual history being memory-holed in real time, right before our eyes.
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Bad Guys

Biden's Dangerous New Ukraine Endgame: No Endgame

Michael Hirsh
foreignpolicy.com
Fri, 29 Apr 2022 14:25 UTC
Biden meets with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Mill
© Win McNamee/Getty ImagesU.S. President Joe Biden meets with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and combatant commanders at the White House in Washington on April 20.

Comment: What makes this semi-objective article so remarkable is that it comes from a US-based geopolitical defense website. So while it leaves out a heck of a lot of context for Russia's operations in the Ukraine, it also points out how the Biden Administration (or those directing him) are essentially still playing with fire.


With his strategy to "weaken" Russia, the U.S. president may be turning the Ukraine war into a global one.

In a dramatic series of shifts this week, U.S. President Joe Biden and his NATO allies have escalated their policy of helping to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression into a policy of undermining the power and influence of Russia itself. In so doing, some observers fear, they are leaving Russian President Vladimir Putin little choice but to surrender or double down militarily, raising the possibility of widening his war beyond Ukraine.

On Thursday, Biden urged Congress to provide $33 billion in additional military, economic, and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine — more than double the previous amount — and said he was sending a clear message to Putin: "You will never succeed in dominating Ukraine." Beyond that, Biden said in remarks at the White House, the new policy was intended "to punish Russian aggression, to lessen the risk of future conflicts."

That followed an equally clear declaration this week from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who after a meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the U.S. objective is now to curtail Russia's power over the long term so it does not have the "capability to reproduce" its military assault on Ukraine. "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine," Austin said in a stopover in Poland.
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Oscar

Ukraine welcomes more high profile guests


RT
Mon, 09 May 2022 16:06 UTC
trudeau ukraine
© AP / Irpen Mayor's OfficeJustin Trudeau walks with Irpen mayor Oleksandr Markushyn, right, in Irpin, Ukraine, May 8, 2022.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and US First Lady Jill Biden made separate visits to the war-torn country.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Ukraine on Sunday to pledge support and meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, while US First Lady Jill Biden made a separate trip to meet with Zelensky's wife. While US President Joe Biden has not traveled to Ukraine, visiting Kiev has become a rite of passage for other Western leaders.

Trudeau's trip, which was not announced beforehand, saw him tour the battle-scarred Kiev suburb of Irpen and raise his country's flag over the newly-reopened Canadian embassy in Kiev, ahead of a scheduled meeting with Zelensky. Trudeau's office said the meeting is intended to "reaffirm Canada's unwavering support for the Ukrainian people."

Comment: All the attention whores and virtue signalers are coming out of the woodwork. More from Reuters:
U2's Bono gives 'freedom' concert in Kyiv metro

Irish rock group U2's frontman Bono and his bandmate The Edge performed a 40-minute concert in a metro station in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Sunday and praised Ukrainians fighting for their freedom from Russia.

"Your president leads the world in the cause of freedom right now ... The people of Ukraine are not just fighting for your own freedom, you're fighting for all of us who love freedom," Bono told a crowd of up to 100 gathered inside the Khreshchatyk metro station. He was referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
...

"This evening, 8th of May, shots will ring out in the Ukraine sky, but you'll be free at last. They can take your lives, but they can never take your pride," he said.




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Oil Well

The EU is destroying its own energy security with the planned Russian oil embargo

Timur Fomenko,
RT
Sat, 07 May 2022 07:03 UTC
Oil well
© Sputnik/Maksim Bogodvid
With no clear alternatives and surging energy prices, sanctions look set to hurt the bloc more than they will harm Russia.

The European Union, this week, announced ambitious proposals to embargo the importation of Russian oil by the end of 2022. After teeth-pulling negotiations which have been met with strident objections from several member states, including Hungary and Slovakia, and public doubt over the impact of such measures, its Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyden declared that these measures would be gradually implemented throughout the course of the year.

This didn't reassure markets, with crude oil prices quickly rising above $114 per barrel as of Friday morning, and Moscow officials predicting that the bloc would still be buying Russian oil via third countries and intermediaries, a strategy that has allegedly been utilized by Iran under tough American sanctions.

Despite marketing the measures as tough, for multiple reasons the EU is set to be the biggest loser of such an effort. The proposed embargo reveals a huge strategic vulnerability in its "energy security" - the ability of a state, or group of states, to secure access to energy resources when they are not capable of producing enough of their own. When you consider how many wars have been fought by the West purely over access to oil supplies, including two in Iraq, this is a big deal.

Comment: If the EU continues on this path of self-destruction, the next winter will make a lot of problem for the EU countries. If you take into account that the climate on our planet is getting colder and more unpredictable and if you take into account that many scientists predict a new mini ace age, than the problems for the EU will become much bigger.

Inflation, food and energy shortages are probably coming very soon.

See also:

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Newspaper

US 'directly' involved in Ukraine conflict - Moscow


RT
Sun, 08 May 2022 22:21 UTC
Vyacheslav Volodin
Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. American leadership should be on a "list of war criminals" for sharing military data with Kiev, top Russian politician claims.
Leading US politicians should be added to a "list of war criminals" as they are now directly participating in "hostilities" in Ukraine, the Chairman of Russia's State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, claimed on Saturday, citing media reports about alleged intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden has told senior intelligence officials that "counterproductive" leaks about data sharing with Ukraine should stop, NBC reported on Friday.

Although there was no official reaction to the report from the US authorities, Volodin took to Telegram to comment on it. "The United States is taking part in hostilities in Ukraine. US President Biden, demanding to stop leaks about the exchange of intelligence information with Ukraine, admitted that Washington had been exposed," he wrote.

Comment: Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: USA vs Russia: Could Proxy War in Ukraine Escalate to Nuclear Conflict?



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Briefcase

Federal judge issues massive ruling on Donald Trump being banned from Twitter

Carmine Sabia
Conservative Brief
Sat, 07 May 2022 00:00 UTC
Trump
© Getty ImagesFormer US President Donald Trump
A federal judge has weighed in with a decision on former President Donald trump's lawsuit over his ban from Twitter.

A San Francisco federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit which sought compensation from the Internet giant for banning himself and others, Fox News reported. U.S. District Court Judge James Donato granted Twitter's motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Friday.

Donato is allowing lawyers for Trump to file an amended complaint that is "consistent with this order" by May 27, and added that it cannot contain any new claims or defendants without prior permission from the court.
The lawsuit alleged that Twitter violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, claimed that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is unconstitutional, and also alleged that Twitter used "deceptive and misleading practices" that are in violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
Donato wrote in his order that the First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies, adding that Trump is "not starting from a position of strength." He said:
"The amended complaint merely offers a grab-bag of allegations to the effect that some Democratic members of Congress wanted Mr. Trump, and 'the views he espoused,' to be banned from Twitter because such 'content and views' were "contrary to those legislators' preferred points of view."
Since his ban from Facebook and Twitter the former president has started his own social media platform, Truth Social.
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Attention

NBC: Biden issues Ukraine warning to US spies


RT
Sat, 07 May 2022 07:42 UTC
Biden
© Stefani Reynolds/CNP/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesUS President Joe Biden
US President Joe Biden has told senior intelligence officials that leaks about alleged intelligence sharing with Ukraine should stop as they "distract" from Washington's objective in the crisis, NBC News reported on Friday.

During the phone conversation with CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Biden hailed the intelligence services' work but stressed that disclosures are counterproductive and ought to cease, the outlet claimed, citing two unnamed administration officials.

None of the organisations concerned have commented on the matter.

The NBC report came a day after several American outlets claimed that US-provided data had allegedly allowed Ukrainian forces to strike Russia's Black Sea flagship Moskva off the coast of Odessa last month. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby denied these reports, saying:
"The Ukrainians have their own intelligence capabilities to track and target Russian naval vessels, as they did in this case."
Russia insists that its missile cruiser wasn't attacked, but sank on April 14 after a fire that had broken out on board caused ammunition to explode.
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