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Belarus blocks media outlets that 'played crucial role in anti-government protests'

Lukashenko
© Maxim Guchek/BelTA Pool Photo via AP
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko speaks with people after the wreath laying ceremony at Mound of Glory war memorial marking Independence Day, on the outskirts of the capital Minsk, Belarus, on July 3, 2021.
Who is Roman Protasevich?

Roman Protasevich, founder of the social media news channel NEXTA, played a crucial role in the anti-Lukashenko protests in Belarus.

The Belarusian authorities on Thursday blocked the website of a leading online media outlet and detained several of its journalists, the latest move in a sweeping crackdown on dissent and independent media in the ex-Soviet nation.


Comment: Lest we forget that the UK recently blocked China's CGTN news network, RT reporters have been repeatedly banned from US and French government briefings for a few years now, and allies Ukraine and Latvia are in the process of shutting down Russian news outlets; is it a 'crackdown on dissent' when the West and its allies does it?


Belarus' Information Ministry said it has blocked Nasha Niva's website after the Prosecutor General's office had accused it of posting unspecified unlawful information.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists, or BAJ, said that the authorities conducted searches at Nasha Niva's offices, detained its chief editor Yahor Martsinovich and editor Andrey Skurko and searched their apartments. Another four Nasha Niva journalists couldn't be reached, the BAJ said.

Comment: As the manufactured coronavirus crisis and the draconian lockdowns are revealing to many, the mainstream media act on behalf of their masters in the establishment, and, in the case of Belarus, it's likely that these news organisations were working to foment discord on behalf of foreign powers towards yet another regime change campaign: "Just like in Ukraine and Belarus": TikTok condemned by Russian parents association over calls for youth to attend Navalny protests

See also: Online Censorship 101: How YouTube censors videos for the US and UK governments


Attention

NSA, the resurrection of the Nazi Gestapo, only worse

It Was OK for Fox News Journalist Megan Kelly to Interview Putin, but if Tucker Carlson Interviews Putin it Means Tucker is a Putin Agent.
Nazi US Flag
© DeviantArt
NSA committed a felony by leaking Tucker Carlson's emails to presstitutes hostile to Tucker in an effort to demonize him and "drive him off the air." The emails were simply about arranging an interview with Putin, but the story being concocted was like the one used against Trump and General Flynn. The plan was to accuse Carlson of being a Russian agent attempting to boost Putin's standing by interviewing him on Fox News. Carlson broke the story before the NSA's presstitute shills could, thus deep-sixing the plan to drive him off the air.

Carlson shouldn't relax, because now the NSA nazis will come after him in a different and more dangerous way.

Nothing can be done to enforce the law against the rogue criminal NSA, because as Glenn Greenwald says, "people in Washington are petrified of the security state." CIA director John Brennan actually spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The senators who were supposed to oversee the CIA were themselves spied on.

Dollar

Banking faces seismic changes

BASEL III
© eamcap.com/KJN
The role of commercial banks in the global economy is changing, with lending to governments and their agencies now more important than lending to goods and services industries. It is a trend which is due to continue.

The new Basel 3 regulations seem set to encourage this trend, despite retail depositors being accorded a stable funding status. Central bank digital currencies are anticipated to augment and perhaps replace non-financial business credit over the next five to ten years.

But the increasing financialisation of commercial banking brings the risk of tying its future firmly to a financial bubble. And with price inflation on the increase, it is only a matter of very little time before that bubble bursts.

This article looks at some of the implications for commercial banking of Basel 3, CBDCs and the changing economic role of commercial banks.

Introduction

The introduction of both Basel 3 banking regulations and central bank plans for digital currencies will affect commercial banks' priorities and their role in the overall financial system. Basel 3, particularly with regard to the application of the net stable funding ratio (NSFR), will change banking priorities by imposing standardised risk factors across the industry, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) threaten to cut the banks out of their intermediary role between central banks and non-financial users of money and credit.

Arrow Down

House Republican says colleagues' 'job' is to slow Democratic priorities

Rep. Chip Roy
© CNN
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX)
GOP Rep. Chip Roy (Texas) said that he believes it is his and his Republican colleagues' "job" to "do everything we can" to slow down Democrats' policy agenda. The remarks came in a recently surfaced video from an event hosted by former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum's (Pa.) group, Patriot Voices, last month.

In the video, which was circulated online by Democratic activist Lauren Windsor, Roy expressed doubt that the House will be able to achieve bipartisanship on a number of issues, including infrastructure and transportation.
"Honestly, right now, for the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022, and then get in there and lead."

Comment: Full of hot air, Dems are fanning their egos by proposing big cost numbers.


Bullseye

Tucker Carlson's FOIA request to NSA

Carlson
© screenshot
Tucker Carlson
A newly released document reveals a wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act request from a producer for Fox News's Tucker Carlson, seeking all documents regarding alleged surveillance of the prime-time anchor by the National Security Agency and filed on June 28, the same day Carlson first made the allegations on TV.

According to a document obtained by a separate FOIA inquiry published by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Carlson's producer, Alexander Pfeiffer, filed the June request seeking
"any call records, texts, or emails the NSA has obtained from journalist Tucker Carlson's cell phone or email, ... any memos or documents related to surveilling journalist Tucker Carlson, ... [and] any communication between NSA officials regarding journalist Tucker Carlson."
The request was filed at 10:08 a.m., just hours before Carlson accused the NSA of "spying" on his electronic communications and "planning to leak them in an attempt to take [his] show off the air." The request asked for the release of all relevant files between Jan. 1, 2019, and June 28, 2021.

Comment: To view the scribd document, go here.

See also:
Tucker Carlson was seeking an interview with Putin at time of NSA spying claim


Bacon

Ice Age Farmer: UK media warns of 'rolling food shortages', imminent 'meat tax', and 'food riots'

food
The UK is now experiencing "rolling brownouts of food supply," as advisors warn there may be "food riots" in the weeks ahead as food prices escalate to unaffordable levels and shelves are emptied. This is coming soon to the USA and Europe. In the "new normal" of the Great Reset, you will take whatever lab-grown meat is made available to you -- or will you start growing your own food now?


Sources

MIB

FBI was surveilling militia-style group for weeks after Capitol riot

trump supporters capitol hill
© Stephanie Keith
Peaceful scene outside Capitol Hill
A Virginia man charged with joining the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol told an undercover FBI agent that he belonged to a militia-style group and coordinated "surveillance efforts" on the same building more than a month after the riot, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday.

The filing, which accompanied a criminal complaint against Fi Duong, doesn't specify why he and an associate wanted to surveil the Capitol for weeks after the Jan. 6 insurrection. But it says an undercover agent attended meetings of Duong's group and that investigators intercepted encrypted communications about post-riot surveillance work.

Comment: A thorough rundown on the FBI's shenanigans:

The Fed's protection of "Oath Keepers" kingpin Stewart Rhodes breaks the entire Capitol "Insurrection" lie wide open


MIB

Trump: Hunter Biden is worse than Al Capone, more 'crimes on his laptop' than the mobster ever committed

Trump Biden laptop al capone
© Getty Images
President Donald Trump brought up the 'laptop from hell' and said there was 'more criminal activity' on Hunter Biden's laptop than Al Capone – if he had had a laptop
Former President Donald Trump said Wednesday there was more 'criminal activity' on Hunter Biden's infamous laptop than mobster Al Capone ever carried out.

Trump commented on what he termed the 'laptop from hell' as he announced his lawsuit against Facebook and big tech.

He used language that suggested he may have seen the laptop, although he didn't specify if he was referring to media reports on its contents.

'The laptop from hell,' Trump termed it.

'You look at that thing, there's more criminal activity on that laptop than Al Capone had if he ever had a laptop,' the former president said.

Comment: Tucker Carlson detailed the crackdown on the Post's reporting at the time:




Eye 1

Tucker Carlson was seeking an interview with Putin at time of NSA spying claim

tucker carlson monitored
© Fox News
Tucker Carlson has been trying to get an interview with Vladimir Putin for his show.
Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.

Why it matters: Those sources said U.S. government officials learned about Carlson's efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach — and that's the basis of his extraordinary accusation, followed by a rare public denial by the NSA that he had been targeted.

Comment: The Federalist's Haley Strack weighs in:
Fox News's Tucker Carlson accused the National Security Agency (NSA) Wednesday night of releasing the contents of his private emails and releasing his identity to at least one journalist, following his accusations of illegal spying by the agency. Last week, Carlson claimed a whistleblower had leaked internal intelligence revealing an NSA operation to spy on and collect his electronic communications.

"Yesterday, we learned that sources in the so-called 'intelligence community' told at least one reporter in Washington what was in those emails — my emails," Carlson said.

"No one in Washington appeared to be shocked in the slightest," Carlson added. "The usual shills right after our segment had a ready explanation for it: Either it never happened at all, they said, just a cable news show lying for ratings, or there must have been a good reason it happened." As Carlson noted, dozens of blue checkmarks on Twitter discarded and mocked his claims.


The contents of the emails, Carlson explained, were communications between the primetime host and sources he thought could "help [the show] get an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin." Carlson said he told nobody but his executive producer Justin Wells about the email communication (since publicity could make the interview fall through), but that the contents of the messages were released anyway.

"The NSA planned to link the contents of those emails to media outlets. Why would they do that?" Carlson asked rhetorically. "The point, of course, was to paint me as a disloyal American; a Russian operative; a stooge of the Kremlin; a traitor doing the bidding of a foreign adversary."

To do so, according to Carlson, President Joe Biden's NSA illegally unmasked the host and was planning to give the information to news organizations.

"By law, the NSA is required to keep secret the identities of American citizens who have been caught up in its vast domestic spying operations. So, by law, I should have been identified internally merely as a U.S. journalist, or American journalist. That's the law," Carlson said. "But that's not how I was identified, I was identified by name. I was unmasked."

He went on to criticize the politicization of the intelligence community. "We cannot have intelligence agencies used as instruments of political control. Both parties used to agree on that. Democrats were especially adamant on the point — but not anymore," he said. "We need to find out how this happened. Who allowed it?"

The "highly political" director of the NSA, Gen. Paul Nakasone would know the answer, Carlson said. According to Carlson, Nakasone would have been required to personally allow his unmasking. Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, may have personally approved such an operation as well, Carlson said.

"[Haines] would certainly know who asked for [the information] and when approved it. That's her job to know. She should release that information immediately — tonight," Carlson said. "And if Haines does not release that information, she should be forced to release that information."



Take 2

Foolish US orders amphibious assault ship into Black Sea after Moscow warns tensions escalating dangerously in waters off coast of Russia

Sea Breeze-2021
© Sputnik / Igor Maslov; (inset) USNS Yuma Murat Yuksel/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Sea Breeze-2021
American sailors at the helm of a naval landing vessel have charted course for the Black Sea to take part in wargames alongside other NATO forces, the US Sixth Fleet has announced on Thursday, amid fears of conflict in the region.

According to commanders, the US Naval Ship Yuma, a Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport craft, "began its northbound transit into the Black Sea to operate with our NATO allies and partners." The twin-hulled catamaran is able to transit a whole company of US Marines and is equipped with both a flight deck and a ramp to allow armored vehicles to rapidly roll into battle.

The Yuma will take part in the colossal 'Sea Breeze' exercises along with personnel from 32 separate nations, including Ukraine, the UK, France, Poland, Georgia, Senegal, South Korea, Pakistan, Japan and Morocco, among others.

Moscow has said the drill poses a real risk for potential escalations in military tensions. Last month, its diplomats called on the US to refrain from participating, saying that "the scale and aggressive nature of the 'Sea Breeze' exercises in no way helps with the real challenges of ensuring security in the Black Sea region."