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Biden repeatedly implies he's not in charge of when, where he can take questions from the press

Brian Flood
Fox News
Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
Biden
© Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
US President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden has repeatedly implied that his handlers set the rules and determine when and where he's allowed to take questions from the press, leading observers to ponder who is actually calling the shots behind the scenes.

The trend began with Biden's first formal White House press conference as president in January. Following his remarks about his "Made in America" manufacturing initiative, a member of Biden's staff was heard calling on specific reporters to ask their questions to the president, something that was similarly done during the 2020 presidential election and the transition period. However, the president has since escalated the practice and Biden has repeatedly suggested he's not in the driver's seat when it comes to handling the press.

"I'm not supposed to take any questions"

Biden declared Sunday he wasn't "supposed to take any questions" during a visit to the National Response Coordination Center at FEMA headquarters as Hurricane Ida slammed Louisiana. "I'm not supposed to take any questions, but go ahead," Biden said to a reporter before quickly changing his mind when he was asked about Afghanistan.

"I'm not gonna answer Afghanistan now," he said before turning his back to the press and walking away.

Comment: Biden's strong suit is taking the questions; not answering them.

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Star of David

Palestinian president and Israeli defense minister discuss security issues in a rare meeting


Sputnik
Mon, 30 Aug 2021 02:43 UTC
Abbas
© Reuters/Pool
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the security situation in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli Defense Ministry informs.

Gantz also told Abbas on Sunday that Israel intends to take measures to strengthen the Palestinian economy, the defense ministry said.

The meeting came just amid the continued unrest on the border of the Gaza Strip, where fires have been set and clashes have occurred between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers. On Saturday, a Palestinian teenager who was severely injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers on August 21 died, and another Palestinian critically wounded passed away on Thursday, health authorities confirmed.

Comment: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Nuke

UN atomic watchdog says North Korea appears to have restarted nuclear reactor


The Guardian
Sun, 29 Aug 2021 21:20 UTC
N Korea atomic site
© AP
North Korea's main atomic complex in Yongbyon
North Korea appears to have restarted a nuclear reactor that is widely believed to have produced plutonium for nuclear weapons, the UN atomic watchdog has said in an annual report.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has had no access to North Korea since Pyongyang expelled its inspectors in 2009. The country then pressed ahead with its nuclear weapons programme and soon resumed nuclear testing. Its last nuclear test was in 2017.

The IAEA now monitors North Korea from afar, largely through satellite imagery.
"There were no indications of reactor operation from early December 2018 to the beginning of July 2021. However, since early July 2021, there have been indications, including the discharge of cooling water, consistent with the operation of the reactor."
IAEA reported on the 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, a nuclear complex at the heart of North Korea's nuclear programme.
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Better Earth

Hungary, Russia agree on long-term gas deal - reports


Sputnik
Mon, 30 Aug 2021 11:46 UTC
nord stream pipe
© AFP 2021 / JOHN RANDERIS HANSEN
Hungary and Russia have agreed on a long-term gas deal, Bloomberg reported on 30 August, citing Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

Szijjarto and Gazprom Head Alexey Miller discussed gas deliveries to Hungary during a meeting in Saint Petersburg on 30 August.

The Hungarian minister said that Budapest will purchase 4.5 billion cubic metres (158 billion cubic feet) of gas annually, including 3.5 billion via Serbia and one billion via Austria, according to Bloomberg. Supplies under the new contract will begin on 1 October. Szijjarto also said that the contract will be signed in late September.

Comment: Hungary and Russia have quite a few conservative views in common that have drawn ire from the West, but with Hungary being part of the EU it is more vulnerable to the pressure to conform, however it's likely that a significant energy deal with Russia will make it a little more difficult for the establishment to exert that pressure:

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Better Earth

What to Do? - The European Dilemma

Patrick Armstrong
Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 20 Aug 2021 19:20 UTC
flags EU
© REUTERS / Vincent Kessler
According to hoary tradition, there are two obsessive questions in Russian history: who is guilty and what is to be done? This assertion is likely another Russophobic trope in which Russia was, is and always will be a mess populated by supine drunks slurring "Not me" and "Pass the bottle". Nonetheless, good questions they are and ones that Europeans should ponder. Here are some circumstances that call out for doing something different.

"European Union as an emerging superpower" - Wikipedia has a whole article on it. And, on paper, it is: the population, the economic power, the potential military power, the intellectual power and everything else necessary to become a significant independent player on the world scene - fully equal to any other major power. Except... it isn't. Why isn't it? Why did it follow Washington's lead and sanction Russia? The sanctions have certainly cost it more than the USA and probably more than Russia; Washington, on the other hand, never sanctions Russian rocket engines or Russian oil. Why do the Europeans dutifully swallow it down? Many of them followed Washington into Afghanistan and other disastrous military adventures for a reward of failure and crisis. At least they've found the will to stop pretending Guaido is really President of Venezuela but they're piling on Belarus at Washington's command. Why? No kind of "superpower" on the geopolitical stage, the EU pretty well does what it's told by Washington. There's the occasional rebellion - Germany and Nord Stream 2 - but then the obsequious sending of a warship on a FON mission to please Washington. Hoping to cut the cost with a cringing attempt to placate Beijing. Are these the actions of a self-respecting independent country? What is to be done?
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Bad Guys

Lockdown-weary Australia plans reopening as Covid-19 death toll tops 1,000


CNBC
Sun, 29 Aug 2021 19:14 UTC
australia
© James D. Morgan | Getty Images
People out exercising at East Circular Quay on August 29, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. New South Wales recorded a record number of 1218 COVID-19 cases on Sunday and 6 deaths.
As Australia's Covid-19 deaths exceed 1,000, a grim toll but modest by global standards, a country that has used relentless lockdowns now faces perhaps its biggest health policy challenge of the pandemic — how to reopen.

The highly infectious delta variant has breached the country's fortress-style controls and entrenched itself deep enough in Sydney, Australia's biggest city, and with a foothold in Melbourne, that authorities have dispensed with plans to eliminate it.

Instead, they plan to ramp up Australia's lagging vaccination effort and live with Covid-19, an approach that would help struggling businesses but which is opposed by states determined to crush the disease.

Australia reported four fatalities on Monday, taking the total death toll from Covid-19 to 1,003, according to government data. It has logged an average of two to three deaths a day recently, the data shows.

But while deaths are creeping higher, infections are surging to successive record highs above 1,200 a day. With more than half the population in lockdown, even those areas with little or no infections are affected.

The exuberance that accompanied Australia's early suppression success has since been replaced with community frustration at a delayed vaccine program that has only recently picked up pace. Just over 33% of those aged 16 and older have received two vaccine doses, well below most comparable nations, according to a Reuters tracker.
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Dollars

An estimated four-fifths of Afghanistan's government budget (foreign aid) has been cut off in the wake of the US retreat

Ilya Tsukanov
Sputnik News
Thu, 26 Aug 2021 14:44 UTC
american dollars flood afghanistan
© AFP 2021 / Wakil Kohsar
In this photograph taken on December 29, 2014, an Afghan customer (L) counts his Afghani currency notes at a currency exchange market along the roadside in Kabul
The Taliban* marched into Kabul on 15 August, taking control of the Afghan capital two weeks before the last of US troops were set to leave. The speed of the advance surprised Washington, which has spent over $2 trillion and nearly 20 years trying to build up a functioning Afghan government and military.

As much 80 percent of Afghanistan's budget has vanished now that the Taliban has taken over and Kabul's western patrons have cut funding, data provided by US government officials and agencies suggests.

According to a recent report by the United Nations, prior to the Afghan government's dramatic collapse and the Taliban takeover, the Islamist group collected between $300 million and $1.6 billion from areas it controlled in a series of taxation schemes on crop harvests and wealth (10 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively), as well as mining, trade, and narcotics. For a country of over 38 million, such sums are paltry when it comes to being able to feed the population, pay salaries to officials, and fund various development projects.
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Stop

Politicians have no right demanding 'vaccine passports' when the vaccines themselves are fraught with risk

Robert Bridge
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 29 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
immunity passport
If it were possible to say with absolute scientific authority that vaccinations are the best way for the planet to escape from the Covid-19 death grip, then it might seem plausible - albeit still highly arguable - for governments to demand proof of 'the mark' for participating in the global economy. As things stand, however, nothing to date indicates that there are not more effective and reliable means of moving forward.

The relentless push for vaccine passports by opportunistic authoritarians around the globe took a broadside this week as Israeli researchers discovered what had been suspected by many all along: natural immunity acquired via infection, as opposed to vaccinations, provides the best defense against Covid-19 and its seemingly endless array of Greek-coded variants.

The study, which examined up to 32,000 individuals, found that the risk of developing Covid-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated (with the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine), and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher, as compared to those individuals who had acquired natural immunity.

Equally shocking, individuals who were administered two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were almost six-times more likely to contract the Delta variation and seven-times more likely to have symptomatic disease than those who recovered from the disease naturally, according to the study, which is up for peer review.
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Star

Cuba confronting US-led subversion

Arnold August
New Cold War
Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
Cuban flag


There is abundant evidence of direct foreign influence on the July 11 demonstrations. Yet a month later there is still a healthy debate going on, including opposing views among Cuban revolutionaries and Communist Party of Cuba members about its significance and how to interpret these unprecedented demonstrators. The controversy to be found in an online discussion in Cuban pro-government media has been building up since July 11 to now.

Anti-Cuban Government Cyber Warfare Originating in Spain, Argentina and the US

Expert cyber analyst in Spain Julián Macías Tovar points out that the operation made intensive use of bots and new accounts recently created for the occasion, intending to make a chorus for #SOSCuba. The bot is a software application that runs automated scripts over the Internet. Typically, bot tasks are simple and repetitive, much faster than a person could type text. More than 1,500 of the accounts that participated in the operation with the hashtag #SOSCuba were created between July 10 and 11. The first account that used the hashtag #SOSCuba was one located in Spain. It posted more than a thousand tweets on July 10 and 11, with an automation of five retweets per second.

Tovar analyzed the more than two million tweets using the hashtag #SOSCuba that started asking for "humanitarian aid" given the increasing COVID-19 deaths. This campaign was spurred on by the participation of artists and thousands of newly created accounts and bots that produced mobilizations in the streets. Tovar points out that the campaign was carried out for artists to participate with the HT #SOSCuba.
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Dollars

Banksters celebrate fiat's 50th! . . . By introducing CBDC nightmare

James Corbett
Corbett Report
Sat, 28 Aug 2021 03:00 UTC
Fiat's Birthday!
© Corbett Report
Happy Birthday, fiat currency!

What, you didn't know that the fiat dollar is 50 years old this month? Well, according to the bankster class and their media lapdogs it is, anyway. Observe:
On 15 August, the United States marked the 50th anniversary of the birth of fiat currency, or a currency that depends on faith in the Federal Reserve and not in the gold standard. Like most 50th anniversaries, this one shows the celebrant worse for wear.
That little gem comes from an article entitled (get this), "The US Fed Can Actually Boost Equality With a Digital Currency."

Right off the bat, if the idea that the fiat dollar is indeed only 50 years old sets off your BS meter, then congratulations! Your BS meter is working. The actual story of the fiat dollar is a much longer and more complex one. Long story short: the fiat dollar was not born in 1971. That was the year of the so-called "Nixon shock," when President Nixon officially severed the gold/dollar link by closing the gold window and thus preventing foreign governments from knocking on the US Treasury's door and asking it to convert their piles of dollars into stacks of gold. That story, too is a much longer and complex one (enjoy some light bedtime reading on De Gaulle vs. the Dollar and The London Gold Pool if you're interested), but the gist is that the Nixon shock was just the final nail in the gold-backed dollar's coffin, not a magical moment in which the dollar suddenly became fiat.

Now, if only the worst piece of propaganda being flouted by the propagandists right now was a misleading headline about the birth date of the fiat dollar, then I could just invite you to explore the links above and we could call it a day. But it's not going to be that easy, is it? No, sadly, this article contains some much more dangerous propaganda: propaganda that touts not just the "benefits" but the inevitability of the coming central bank digital currency (CBDC). And as you should all know by now, the central bank digital currency is the birth of the cashless society control grid that the independent media has been warning about for decades now.

So, let's roll up our sleeves and deconstruct this propaganda, shall we?
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