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Vladimir Putin ain't no corn pop

James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com
Fri, 19 Mar 2021 21:53 UTC
putin and biden
I wasn't being a wise guy. I was alone with him in his office, that's how it came about," Biden continued. "It was when President Bush had said, 'I've looked in his eyes and saw his soul.' I said, 'I looked in your eyes, and I don't think you have a soul.' He looked back and he said, 'We understand each other.' "

— ABC News, Joe Biden with George Stephanopoulos on V. Putin of Russia
Somehow, I don't think Joe Biden understood what he thought Vladimir Putin understood about what they mutually understood. If I had to guess, I'd say that Mr. Putin understood Joe Biden to be the most pathetic blustering schlemiel he'd ever encountered on the international scene. But that must have been before Mr. B was installed in the White House by powers and persons unseen because it's evident now that his handlers do not allow him to talk to foreign leaders, not even on the phone. Ms. Harris does that.

The alleged president went on to tell Mr. Stephanopoulos that Mr. Putin was "a killer" who would "soon pay a price" for interfering in the 2020 election. In turn, Mr. Putin promptly called the Russian ambassador back home "for consultations," which is generally what happens when one country makes warlike noises to another country.
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Take 2

To downplay Biden, White House directs all agencies to refer to 'Biden-Harris Administration' in official communications


getoutspoken.com
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 21:46 UTC
kamala
© Forbes
A leaked email from an employee of a federal government agency reveals the White House is shifting toward a communication strategy that seeks to elevate Vice President Kamala Harris in all official White House business.

The directive, the employee reports, came from a top White House communications team member and instructs all agencies to refer to the Biden administration as the "Biden-Harris Administration" in place of the "Biden Administration."

"Please be sure to reference the current administration as the 'Biden-Harris Administration' in official public communications," the directive reads, with "Biden-Harris Administration" accented in bold.
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USA

Annex Cuba? Left & Right unite to bash 'woke' neocon imperialist Bill Kristol for advocating US takeover of island nation


RT
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 03:45 UTC
Havana
© Reuters/Stringer
Havana, Cuba
Making a case for Washington, DC statehood by saying the US should also expand to Cuba "as soon as it's free," a notorious neoconservative architect of US global hegemony found himself derided by liberals and conservatives alike.

On Monday, as House Democrats held a hearing promoting statehood for the US capital district, Bill Kristol argued that expansion has "always been a sign of our vigor" and that it's time for "DC, Puerto Rico, Cuba (as soon as it's free), 1 or 2 more?" after 60 years of having 50 states.
Kristol's proposal was quickly slammed from the right. Yoram Hazony, one of the founders of the National Conservative movement, said his "old friend Bill" just provided evidence of an unbridgeable chasm between them and neocons.

"What Bill thinks is good for America would end it," Hazony added.

Comment: As per Kristol's suggestion, Cuba hasn't suffered enough from US belligerence and dominance. It is just begging to be used by the neocons and Democrats to increase their voting clout.

See also:

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Briefcase

Leaked docs show Obama FTC gave Google its monopoly after Google execs helped Obama get re-elected

Rachel Bovard
The Federalist
Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Google
© Google
Leaked documents from the FTC's 2012 investigation of Google show exactly what is wrong with the state of American antitrust enforcement.

Eight years ago, the Federal Trade Commission had the chance to face down Google — the giant of Silicon Valley whose power now alters the free flow of information at a global scale, distorts market access for businesses large and small, and changes the nature of independent thought in ways the world has never experienced.

Instead, the FTC blinked — and blinked hard, choosing to close the investigation in early 2013. A remarkable leak to Politico of agency documents about the 2012 Google investigation reveals that, despite ample evidence of market distortions and threats to competition presented by the agency's lawyers, the five commissioners of the FTC deferred instead to speculative claims by their economists.

Records and reporting about the 2012 investigation suggest the FTC did so while bending to political pressure from the Obama White House — which was, in turn, bending to political pressure from Google. William Kovacic, a former FTC chair under President George W. Bush, reviewed the more than 3,000 pages of documents leaked to Politico and concluded the agency overlooked "what many experts and regulators would consider clear antitrust violations," calling the specificity of issues outlined "breathtaking."
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X

CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou: Julian Assange can't receive a fair trial in the US

Mohamed Elmaazi
Sputnik
Tue, 16 Mar 2021 08:00 UTC
Kiriakou
© Truthout/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0/.jpg
John Kiriakou
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will face a system that is rigged by design before he ever sets foot in the court room, should he be extradited to the Unites States, CIA officer-turned-whistleblower John Kiriakou explains in an exclusive interview with Sputnik.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counter-terrorism officer and former chief investigator for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In an exclusive interview with Sputnik, Kiriakou explains how he faced decades in prison after being charged with Espionage Act offences following his revelations that the Bush administration was engaged in torture of terror suspects. Kiriakou, who co-hosts The Backstory on Sputnik radio in Washington DC, also said that he did not believe it was possible for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to receive a fair trial, as he would face a jury made up of members of the national security state, the military, or their family members.

Sputnik: Can you explain the events leading up to you being arrested and prosecuted by the US federal government?
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Nuke

Iran's defense minister says country must prepare for nuclear and chemical attacks

Dave DeCamp
AntiWar.com
Tue, 16 Mar 2021 00:00 UTC
Hatami
© Tehran Times
Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami
On Tuesday, Iran's defense minister said the country must be prepared to face nuclear, chemical, and biological attacks.

"We should be prepared to defend our nation against all threats and whatever the enemy may one day use as an offensive tool, including chemical, nuclear and biological weapons," said Gen. Amir Hatami, according to Iran's Fars News Agency.

Hatami made his comments on the 33rd anniversary of a chemical weapons attack by Saddam Hussein on Iraqi Kurds in Halabja, Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war that raged from 1980 to 1988, Hussein frequently used chemical weapons against Iran, sometimes with US support.

Declassified CIA documents revealed that in 1988, the US shared intelligence with Hussein to show the location of Iranian troops, knowing he would use lethal gas against them. The documents revealed the US had firm evidence Hussein was using chemical weapons as early as 1983.
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Bulb

Mandatory vaccination against coronavirus would be wrong, says Russian deputy PM, warning some citizens still 'distrust' all jabs


RT
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:53 UTC
Sputnik V Russian vaccine
© Sputnik
A medic works with a patient vaccinated with Russian Gam-COVID-VAK (trademark "Sputnik V") coronavirus vaccine who has come to donate antibody-rich plasma at the City Clinical Hospital No 52, in Moscow, Russia.
Russia's mass immunization campaign against Covid-19 has picked up speed, the country's deputy prime minister has told RT, saying that despite some anti-vax sentiment, there is no need to force the public to roll up their sleeves.

Speaking as part of an exclusive interview with RT in Russian published on Tuesday, Tatyana Golikova said that the authorities "now have a better understanding" of how to organize the public health campaign, and "more than 6,000 vaccination points have been opened in our country." Around 89 million sets of doses are now planned to be produced in the first half of this year, she added, with three domestically developed formulas.

"We have defined for ourselves the number of people that we need to vaccinate in order to achieve collective immunity is almost 69 million," Golikova said. "We are moving actively in this direction and, even at our current rate, we think we can reach these numbers in August, but we expect pace to pick up before then."
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Family

Public pressure: Biden administration finally releases images of migrant facilities at Texas border

Morgan Chalfant and Jonathan Easley
The Hill
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 18:34 UTC
texas migrant facilities march 2021
© Jaime Rodriguez Sr/U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs
The Biden administration on Tuesday released video footage and photos of two Texas facilities housing migrant children amid pressure for more transparency at the federal centers.

A Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) official told The Hill that the agency continues to "discourage external visitors" - including the press - at the facilities housing migrant children.

However, CBP released two videos and 44 images of the facilities in Donna, Texas and El Paso, Texas in an effort to "balance the need for public transparency and accountability," the official said.

Comment: As pretty as these facility images are, they don't tell the whole story. The numbers arriving at the border far exceed their capacity. More on the overflow:
Gila Bend, Arizona, is a town of less than 2,000 people, located halfway between the state capital of Phoenix and Sonoyta, a village on the Mexican side of the border. Mayor Chris Riggs told Fox News on Monday that for the past two weeks, Border Patrol agents have been dropping off busloads of illegal immigrants in Gila Bend, with no further instruction from the government on what to do with them.

"Border Patrol let us know that they were going to be dropping migrants that had been detained for 72 hours in our town, which we really didn't understand because we have nothing here," Riggs told FOX Business. He said that he's been left "completely in the dark" by the Biden administration on what to do with the new arrivals, and has not received any funding to shelter, house or feed the migrants.

Announcing that he would declare a state of emergency in the hope of getting some federal aid, Riggs told Fox that to test two busloads of migrants for Covid-19 every week for a year would cost his town $600,000. In addition to the influx by bus, he said that 20 or so migrants are arriving every day on foot, and violent crime has increased in Gila Bend as a result.

Riggs has appeared on TV multiple times in recent weeks to highlight the same problem. "Quite frankly, it's going to cost us tens of thousands of dollars a year to be able just to provide them with a bottle of water and a sandwich when they get dropped off," he told Fox last week. He then spoke to RT, and said dropping migrants off without health and background checks was akin to "opening Pandora's box."

Riggs is just the mayor of one small town, but his story illustrates a wider problem along the US' 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
Meanwhile, in the progressive liberal bubble of Washington, Kamala seems to be not grasping the magnitude of the problem. Or perhaps, she just doesn't care?
Vice President Kamala Harris dismissed a reporter with a cackle and said "not today" after she was asked whether she had plans to visit America's southern border, which is now overwhelmed by migrants arriving in record numbers.

The exchange took place on Monday, as Harris spoke to reporters after arriving at Jacksonville International Airport in Florida on Air Force One. When asked about a potential trip to the border, she answered, "Um, not today" before letting out a laugh. "But I have before, and I'm sure I will again."


The response came off as tone deaf at a time when the border faces a rapid influx of illegal immigration and deteriorating conditions at migrant detention facilities, only worsening since President Joe Biden took office in January and enacted policies incentivizing migrants to make the trek north. Harris' comment also happened to come on the same day that both Axios and Project Veritas released photos showing the squalid conditions at holding centers for unaccompanied migrant children detained at the border.

...

Critics on social media blasted Harris for seemingly laughing off the issue.

"Kamala Harris, putting children in cages is NO laughing matter..." charged conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza.

"Apparently, the border crisis is now a laughing matter for the Biden administration," Senator Cruz's adviser Steve Guest quipped.

A supporter of ex-president Donald Trump argued that the media does not hold Harris to the same standard as the former Republican president.

"No urgency, no crisis," another commenter said. "If this was Trump, OMGEE, the breaking news goes all the way to the Milky Way."


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Star of David

No matter who wins in the latest Israeli election, it's clear that the Palestinians will be the losers

Robert Inlakesh
RT
Tue, 23 Mar 2021 16:28 UTC
protest sign netanyahu corruption
© Reuters
A woman walks past a banner depicting Israeli PM Netanyahu and words "Crime Minister" outside the Justice Ministry in Jerusalem
Israel goes to the polls today, with Benjamin Netanyahu set to rely on extreme right-wingers if he is to retain power, and the hardline Gideon Saar the probable alternative. Either outcome is bad news for the Palestinian people.

Benjamin Netanyahu heads into Tuesday's election, the fourth in only two years, with a deeply divided political opposition. The Israeli premier is running against 10 opposition parties, as opposed to four main parties in last year's election. And as he bids to win not only an election but also evade prosecution over corruption charges, he's brought under his wing the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, along with other far-right groups.
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Smiley

Russia's Lavrov seen wearing cheeky mask in China

Andrei Dergalin
Sputnik
Mon, 22 Mar 2021 14:50 UTC
lavrov cheeky mask
© Sputnik / Tatiana Kukushkina
The mask was apparently given to the minister by journalists as a gift.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sported a new look during his recent visit to China where he was seen wearing a face mask emblazoned with a message relating to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The design of the mask, which Lavrov apparently received as a gift from journalists, featured a simple message: "FCKNG QRNTN."

Comment: The man knows how to make a statement.

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