Puppet MastersS


Cardboard Box

Famine in Europe: The real goal of anti-Russian policies

EU flaggrain
© oireachtas.ie/thepovertylab.com/KJN
Irresponsible policies disguised as "support for Ukraine" could lead Europe to social collapse in the long term.

The controversy over Ukrainian agricultural products continues. Ukrainian food products have simply invaded the European market and are driving thousands of farmers out of business. Despite the protests and political pressure, no EU decision-maker seems interested in changing this tragic scenario. However, the crisis seems to have even deeper dimensions and could be a real time bomb for the entire European society.

The Bulgarian government recently asked the European Commission to pass a resolution banning the import of Ukrainian chicken eggs. According to the Bulgarian authorities, the large amount of cheap Ukrainian eggs on the European market is hurting Bulgarian producers, who rely on egg sales as a vital part of their business. Thousands of Bulgarian farmers are going bankrupt, and the crisis is only expected to get worse in the near future.

The problem is not limited to eggs or Bulgaria. Selling grain, meat, dairy products and everything that is produced in the countryside seems to be no longer an attractive business in Europe. Since 2022, protests for change have been taking place in all parts of the European continent. From Poland to France, no European farmer is happy to see his products being replaced on the market by massive quantities of cheap Ukrainian agricultural items.

Comment: Doesn't take a genius to uncover the culprits. True to predatory form, they specialize in the degradation of other countries.


Whistle

'A self-feeding circle': How a web of NGOs enabled by Biden-Harris is fueling the migrant crisis

Carfence
© Adam Schulz/Wikimedia Commons Public Official White House photoPresident Biden's motorcade • U.S.-Mexico border • Brownsville Border Patrol Station • Brownsville, Texas • February 29, 2024
A web of NGOs is collaborating with government agencies to facilitate the resettlement of refugees - and Biden-Harris policies have only exacerbated the migrant crisis, sources told the Caller.

Immigration was thrust into the public spotlight as towns in America were overwhelmed with migrants, from Springfield, Ohio to Aurora, Colorado. Bureaucracies and non-profits often work in tandem to resettle refugees, and NGOs have only grown in influence under the Biden-Harris administration, experts said.

Capital Research Center's Parker Thayer told the Caller in a statement:
"It's undeniable that the Biden Administration's border policy has benefited the network of immigration NGOs that receive massive government contracts and grants to deal with the logistical and humanitarian problems that mass illegal immigration has caused."
While it's difficult to quantify precisely how much NGOs have benefited, Thayer pointed to a USA Spending database. It shows that since 2020, federal spending on loans, grants, and contracts with the keyword "immigrant" has skyrocketed by almost tenfold.

Comment: This structure is but another nail in America's coffin at the literal expense of its citizens. And, it likely won't stop there.


Cards

October Surprise

vance walz debate
"Normally, Western politics gives us actors who are trying to play the role of politicians. Walz is like an actor who is trying to play the role of an actor trying to play the role of a politician. Almost everything about him is just a few degrees off-centre. He's like what would happen if you endowed Chat GPT with a human body and sent it off to campaign for political office." — Eugyppius on Substack
Tuesday night's veep palaver could be the last time you see the frightened animal known as Tim Walz for the duration of the campaign. He's famous for his wild body language — jumping around on stage, flapping his arms — but this time the action was all concentrated in his face. You saw his eyes bug out, dart left and right, as if something fierce was coming at him (it was), and more than a few times, his head jerked around sideways so hard you wondered if it might do a whole three-sixty.

His mouth, a pain-inflected frown in repose, turned down so deeply it looked like he had sashweights hanging from the corners. Altogether, his face said more than the embarrassing mishmash of mangled English that came out of it. I expect to see a few Tim Walz masks on the little goblins begging for Kit-kat bars the night of October 31.

Attention

They lie. They cheat. They steal. They bomb. And they spin

Missiles
© Public Domain
A case could be made that Iran's Ballistic Retaliation Night, a measured response to Israel's serial provocations, is less consequential when it comes to the efficacy of the Axis of Resistance than the decapitation of Hezbollah's leadership.

Still, the message was enough to send the Talmudic psychopathologicals into a frenzy; for all their hysterical denials and massive spin, Iron Toilet Paper and the Arrow system were de facto rendered useless.

The IRGC made it known that the volley of missiles was inaugurated by a single hypersonic Fatteh 2 which took out the Arrow 3 air defense system's radar - capable of intercepting missiles in the atmosphere.

And well-informed Iranian military sources stated that hackers went on heavy cyberattack mode to disrupt the Iron Dome system just before the start of the operation.

The IRGC finally confirmed that just about 90% of the intended targets were hit; the implication was that each target was supposed to be visited by several missiles, with some getting intercepted.

It's open to wide speculation how many F-35s and F-15s were ultimately destroyed or damaged on two air bases, one of which, Nevatim, in the Negev, becoming literally inoperable.

The Iran-Russia military entente - part of their soon to be signed comprehensive strategic partnership - was in effect. The IRGC used the recently supplied Russian electromagnetic jammer to blind Israel-NATO GPS systems - including those of U.S. aircrafts. That explains the Iron Dome far off hitting the empty night skies.

Cruise Missle

Houthis send email alert to Red Sea ships: Prepare for attack, with best regards

houthis attack tanker
© EPAOctobr 1, 2024: The Houthi group shared the clip of a big explosion near the side of the Cordelia Moon, which damaged its port side tank and covered it in clouds of smoke.
In a concerning development, the Houthi rebels in Yemen have been sending a series of threatening emails to Greek shipping companies operating vessels in the Red Sea. The messages warn that ships traveling through the region face the risk of attack if they have any connections to Israel.

The email campaign began in May, with the first message arriving in the personal inbox of a senior executive at a Greek shipping firm. The email, written in English, was sent by the Yemen-based Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC) - a body established in February to liaise between Houthi forces and commercial shipping.

The message warned that one of the company's vessels had violated a Houthi-imposed transit ban by docking at an Israeli port, and would be "directly targeted by the Yemeni Armed Forces in any area they deem appropriate." The email went on to say the company would face "sanctions" if the ship continued to enter ports affiliated with "the usurping Israeli entity."

Comment: The Houthis don't bluff. From MENAFN:
The Houthi group in Yemen said on Tuesday, October 2, 2024, that it had launched multiple attacks targeting two ships travelling in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said the first operation targeted British oil ship Cordelia Moon in the Red Sea, using eight ballistic and winged missiles, a drone, and an unmanned boat. He added that the operation "severely damaged" the ship, according to Houthi-run al-Masirah TV, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The second operation targeted the ship Marathopolis in the Indian Ocean with a cruise missile, and the third operation targeted the same ship again in the Arabian Sea," he said.

"We will not stop launching attacks until the (Israeli) aggression on Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted, as well as the (Israeli) aggression on Lebanon is stopped," said Sarea.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), earlier in the day, reported multiple attacks on a ship 64 nautical miles northwest of Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeidah.

In a post on X, it reported four splashes near the ship, a "missile" attack, and an uncrewed surface vessel attack that punctured the number 6 port ballast tank, which is used for adjusting the buoyancy of the ship.

The UKMTO said all crew members were safe.

The Houthis on Tuesday also claimed responsibility for five drone attacks on what they called "military targets" in the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Eilat.

The Houthi group, which controls large swathes of northern Yemen, has been attacking "Israeli-linked" shipping near the country's coastline since November 2023 to show support for Palestinians in their conflict with Israelis.



Bad Guys

Best of the Web: The reprehensible audacity Of FEMA being broke

mayorkas Fema
© Associated PressMayorkas three months ago: “FEMA is tremendously prepared for hurricane season”
We don't even have the decency to fake as though we care about our own citizens anymore.

Part of what I love about having this blog is that it is cathartic for me when I want to be heard, understood, or otherwise just bitch and moan about things in the world of finance, the economy, and politics that I find askew.

From the jump, one of the things I have written about is how dead wrong both sides of the political aisle have our fiscal and monetary policy. With monetary policy, both parties have quietly fallen in line under the mutated breed of Keynesian economics our Federal Reserve implements, which rests on the sole idea of printing money and praying that either hyperinflation doesn't occur or the economy doesn't collapse.

Republicans occasionally criticize the Federal Reserve and pepper in objections here and there about our abuse of the dollar, but when all is said and done, they fall in line behind monetary policy as it stands today. Democrats have gone full non sequitur and, through the miracle of faux-intellectual academic bullshit squared, have somehow convinced themselves that none of the basic rules of economics — such as debits and credits and supply and demand — exist anymore.

Comment:




Quenelle

Austria - Another right-wing election winner is sidelined in the EU

Herbert Kickl
Lead candidate of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) Herbert Kickl celebrates with supporters at the FPOe election evening party following Austrian parliamentary elections on September 29, 2024 in Vienna, Austria.
'Populist' these days simply means listening to what the people want, yet the Austrian leaders and media are trying to make it look borderline Nazi.

Another right-wing anti-establishment party has just won the popular vote in yet another European nation, this time the Austrian parliamentary elections. But as long as the establishment elites can still figure out how to keep themselves in power by clinging to one another despite their nominal ideological differences, they really don't care. It sounds like a brilliant strategy. Let's see where it goes, shall we?

The elites in Austria, like elsewhere in Europe, see it as their duty to defend democracy by ensuring that the party that gets the most votes gets completely sidelined. Why? Because, Hitler. Duh.

According to the Associated Press, Austria's Freedom Party secured the "first far-right national election win since World War 2." And we all know which famous Austrian is synonymous with the Second World War. How subtle.

"EU rocked as far-Right party founded by Nazi WW2 veterans storms to victory," noted one British tabloid, the Express. "Herbert Kickl's Freedom Party is on for a huge victory in Austria according to early projections." Interesting how Nazi history is omitted entirely when Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov movement runs around with Nazi symbol flags and tattoos to kudos from the same establishment.

Comment: The so-called democracy which the EU blows much smoke about and claims to be defending, is under assault. Not from the voters or those parties which listen to their voters but rather from the more and more totalitarian globalist elite which in the EU and its member states is getting increasingly desperate in clinging to power.

See also:


Magic Hat

VP debate - J.D. Vance has done something Trump cannot

J.D. Vance
© Stephen MaturenRepublican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.
By being reasonable, polite, and focused on policy issues, the Republican vice presidential nominee won his debate hands down.

Republican Vice Presidential nominee J.D. Vance handed in a bravura performance in his debate with his Democrat counterpart Tim Walz this week.

The debate was full of surprises - including the fact that the confrontation between the two politicians amounted to something approaching a genuine political debate. Even more surprisingly, it was an extremely civil and polite exchange.

In the Trump era this is an unexpected and rare occurrence. Trump is incapable of seriously debating policy issues - instead he simply abuses and insults his political opponents.

But Vance and Walz managed to engage in a policy debate of sorts and neither candidate stooped to crude personal attacks.

The most surprising aspect of the debate was that a radically new version of J.D. Vance appeared on stage - and the transformation was quite extraordinary.

Comment: Mainstream journalists are used to paint politicians they don't like in a black and white stereotypical fashion. It is therefore a puzzle to them when such politicians are demonstrably seen, as in the VP debate, to be much more nuanced than the caricatures they normally are portrayed as.

See also:


Wolf

Biden-Harris DHS Sec Mayorkas admits FEMA funds won't last through hurricane season after diverting $641 MILLION for 'noncitizen migrants'

joe biden mayorkas kamala harris
"President" Joe Biden, DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas, Vice President Kamala Harris
"FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season."

Biden-Harris Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted that funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not last through the hurricane season this year. This comes after the DHS diverted over $640 million for "non-citizen migrants," the latest term for illegal immigrants, for shelters in 2023. This diversion of funding was in April 2024, prior to the disaster that struck the Southeast with Hurricane Helene.

Mayorkas made the admission to reporters on Wednesday, per the Associated Press. "We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting," Mayorkas told the press. "FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season." Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, however most of the storms occur in September and October.

FEMA is currently being stretched for cash as it has been working to assist with the damage that has been caused by Hurricane Helene in the southern states of the US. The storm made landfall in Florida last week, and then it went up through several other states in the Southeast before dying down. The storm flooded and destroyed several towns and has killed at least 160 people. Hundreds are still missing and that number is expected to rise.

Bullseye

Enough already: Stop provoking Russia

chess pieces Russia ukraine graphic
© Mises Institute/Adobe Stock
Like many people, I eagerly await Scott Horton's upcoming book, Provoked, which will explain in detail the US provocations that led to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But will it come too late?

Since the Russia-Ukraine war began, the Biden administration, in collaboration with the Ukrainian government and much of Europe, has continued incessantly provoking Putin toward a wider conflict with the West. One can recognize the dangerous path we tread without justifying any of Russia's responses to these provocations.

The US and Europe have armed Ukraine to the teeth. The West has funded Ukraine's military effort — and a great deal of corruption — to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Supposedly this is good for the US because it aids the US military-industrial complex, but this will be cold comfort in the event of war with Russia.