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© Fox BusinessHunter Biden
Hunter Biden, the vice president's son, and his colleagues at Rosemont Seneca Partners and related businesses found it the perfect time to conquer a turbulent world for more business, according to emails on a Hunter Biden laptop hard drive seized by the FBI in December 2019 from a Delaware repair shop. One of their plans was to target the sovereign wealth funds of America's richest allies, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.
Daniel McHale, the RSP Investments managing director, wrote Hunter Biden and a colleague named Eric Schwerin an email dated Feb. 3, 2014. RSP Investments was the broker arm of the Rosemont Seneca empire that Hunter Biden helped engineer:
"I've been researching sovereign wealth funds lately in hopes of coming up with a plan to add another large manager (multi-billion dollar fund) to RSPI's platform, without over-relying on the Taft Hartley channel. I think this would provide us additional near-term cash flow while increasing the odds of landing a large allocation. Also, similar to Taft Hartley funds, it's a segment of the market where we could have a definable edge."The email attached a "list of the largest sovereign wealth funds" in the world with a combined wealth of more than $3 trillion, from China and Russia to Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Qatar.
© AP/Getty Image/unknownQatar's Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani
Nine unnamed Syrians filed a claim for damages against two Qatari banks, multiple charities, businessmen, politicians, civil servants, and other defendants, alleging that the Gulf state's monarch's private office was central to a scheme of illicit money transfers to Jibhat al-Nusra. The accusers are claiming damages for financial losses, torture, arbitrary detention and threats of execution at the hands of Jibhat al-Nusra. Matthew Jury, the managing partner at McCue & Partners, said:
"British justice is the envy of the world, a refuge for victims to hold perpetrators of international crimes to account and we must ensure it remains that way."The case alleges that the conspiracy includes the Muslim Brotherhood, meetings in Turkey and money laundering. The defendants include Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, Qatar's former prime minister, and Abdulhadi Mana al-Hajri, the owner of Ritz hotel in London.
Comment: Pull the right string and the fabric unravels, exposing all the hidden threads.
© Kevin Lamarque / ReutersPresident Donald Trump
"Good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin — don't fall asleep during the meeting, and please give him my warmest regards!" Trump said in an emailed statement.
Trump nicknamed Biden "Sleepy Joe" during last year's presidential campaign and repeatedly claimed he was in mental decline.
His snarky well wishes to Biden follow the president's meeting Thursday with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The leaders showered each other with compliments and Biden even gave Johnson a new bicycle.
© AP Photo/Oded Balilty
The comments by Yossi Cohen, speaking to Israel's Channel 12 investigative program "Uvda" in a segment aired Thursday night, offered an extraordinary debriefing by the head of the typically secretive agency in what appears to be the final days of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rule.
It also gave a clear warning to other scientists in Iran's nuclear program that they too could become targets for assassination even as diplomats in Vienna try to negotiate terms to try to salvage its atomic accord with world powers.
"If the scientist is willing to change career and will not hurt us anymore, than yes, sometimes we offer them" a way out, Cohen said.
1. The Fed has perfected moral hazard: everyone from the money manager betting billions to the punters gambling their stimmy money is absolutely confident I can't lose because the Fed will always push the market higher.
What happens when participants are confident they can't possibly lose? They make ever-riskier and ever-larger bets. The entire nation is in the grip of a moral hazard mania, all based on the confidence that the Fed will always push every market higher — always, without fail.
2. Organic (i.e. non-manipulated) market forces have been extinguished. There is now only one consequential force, the Fed. All markets are now 100% dependent on the Fed responding to every bleat from every punter who's recklessly risky bet is about to go bad.
The Fed is now the perfect union of quasi-religious savior and Helicopter Parent: oh dear, our little darling got high and crashed the Porsche? Quick, let's save our precious market from any consequences!
Every day, Fed speakers take to the pulpit to spew another sermon about the Fed's god-like power and wisdom. The true believers soak up every word: golly-gee, the Fed is better than any god — it's guaranteeing I can get rich if I just leverage up any bet in any market!
Comment: Being dependent on those direct deposits will very likely also mean having to do exactly what the Federal Gov't wants you to do; so if there is a way to avoid having to rely on the handouts - it may afford us some measure of independence, however small.
© Sputnik / Russian Foreign MinistryIn this handout photo released by the Russian Foreign Ministry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is pictured during a meeting with his Djiboutian counterpart Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, in Moscow, Russia.
Comment: Wonderful anti-imperial-US zingers abound in this piece. If only there were enough sane individuals in Washington's seats of power with ears capable of actually listening!
While Russia makes no secret of its colossal armed forces and influence across the globe, it is fundamentally uninterested in imposing its way of life on other nations and is keen to end the current stand-off with the West.
That's according to the country's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who told an international relations conference on Wednesday that Moscow "has no superpower ambitions, regardless of how much people try to convince themselves and everyone else otherwise."
"We don't have the messianic fervor with which our Western colleagues are trying to spread their 'values-based democratic agenda' throughout the planet," he added. "It has long been clear to us that the imposition of a certain development model from the outside does nothing good."
Russia, Lavrov argued, "does not have an inferiority complex" and is therefore not spoiling for a fight. He claimed Moscow's foreign policy is based around its willingness "to help those who need it," and said the country is interested in developing "pragmatic relations with the West and the US."
© Composite: Rex, APPublic First is run by husband and wife policy specialists James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, both of whom previously worked with Dominic Cummings and the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove.
Michael Gove acted unlawfully when the government awarded a contract without a tender to a polling company owned by long-term associates of his and Dominic Cummings, then Boris Johnson's chief adviser, a judge has ruled.
Campaigners had taken legal action against Gove over the decision to pay more than £500,000 of taxpayers' money to the market research firm Public First, following the start of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020, and questioned the involvement of Cummings.
Mrs Justice O'Farrell, who gave the ruling on the Cabinet Office contract with Public First, said: "The decision of 5 June 2020 to award the contract to Public First gave rise to apparent bias and was unlawful."
She ruled that the Cabinet Office's failure to identify or consider any other research agency to carry out the work gave the appearance of "a real danger" that the contract award was biased.
The ruling is the first in a series of judicial review legal challenges brought by the Good Law Project (GLP) against government Covid-19 contracts awarded with no competitive tenders under emergency regulations.
Comment: And, of course, Cummings tried to spin his decision to hire his friends (and support the revolving door of cronyism in the name of the 'crisis') in the following way:
Responding to the ruling, Cummings, who previously served as Prime Minister Boris Johnson's chief adviser, argued that the court failed to take into account the government's priorities in the early days of the pandemic.
"On this basis the courts [should] rule that many 2020 decisions were similarly 'unlawful' as I & the Cabinet Secretary repeatedly told officials 'focus on imminent threats to lives/destruction, not process/lawyers/Potemkin paper trails,'" he tweeted. He said that Public First had helped to collect urgently-needed data which "helped key decisions and saved lives."
Suggesting that the government had bypassed formalities so that it could focus on responding in a timely manner to the health crisis, Cummings added: "If Covid doesn't justify focus on outcome>process, nothing will."
The former aide, who left his position last year, argued during the court case that ministers had to act quickly following the outbreak of the pandemic, and that the deal with Public First was "entirely justified."
SOTT Focus: NHS Told to Identify Patients Actually Sick From Covid-19 Rather Than Those Testing Positive
Comment: In an outrageous development that has not produced the appropriate condemnation and questioning, changes to the way UK hospitals collect data will correct the way covid cases and deaths have been reported. Unlike the last 14 months where anyone who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, or died with a positive test for SARS-CoV-2, were deemed to be "positive cases" or have died "from covid", regardless of whether or not that was the actual cause of death, the new method will clinically define covid cases and deaths. This will create the necessary appearance that the vaccines are working and make the impact of the virus on the NHS "look better".
© REUTERS/Maxim ShemetovRussian opposition activist Alexei Navalny appears via video link during a court hearing at the Petushki district court, Russia May 26, 2021.
Alongside the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), his national network of political offices and his Citizens' Rights Protection Foundation were also branded as extremist.
The decision comes six weeks after the same body approved preliminary restrictions against the activist's organization, pending today's result. These limits included a ban on posting materials online, as well as a prohibition on organizing rallies and participating in elections.
Comment: During the municipal elections in 2020, Navalny and his supporters won 7 council seats in 2 regions, described as a failure by the Russian press, meanwhile the nationalist parties were seen as posing a more significant electoral threat to Russia's main parties; so, for the moment at least, Navalny and his gang were hardly legitimate challengers to the government.
See also:
- Pro-western liberal, anti-migrant nationalist, or political opportunist: Who exactly is Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny?
- 50% of Ukrainians who oppose NATO are 'smart' knowing they'd be used by US as cannon fodder against Russia - Putin
Comment: Devil is in the details, particularly for slipshod Hunter Biden. That these confirmations as to his various activities are just trickling out, shows to what extent there has been, and still is, a cover-up in play.