Russia's Response Shocks Europe as the EU's $105 Billion Asset Seizure Backfires by Yanis Varoufakis (Video - 25mn)

   Another AI generated video! But I must say it took me some time listening and checking to find out. (typical recent blog with no history and no followers.)

  And still, the quality of what is being said is stunning. Extracted from thousands of video by Yanis Faroufakis is sounds genuine and to some extent is original and recent. If we get that level of quality from AI at this stage, imagine what this will be in a year or two. I do not think we will be able to tell the difference at all by then.  

  PS: The unnatural shoulder movements tell you immediately that this is AI generated but this will be corrected soon. Then what?  Unlike the video itself, I couldn't find any flaws in what was being said. It is financially and logically correct without mentioning a perfect syntax. Great AI job! Within a year or less, fake pictures and fake information will swamp the Internet leaving reality behind.   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQZnPfOh3y8

DOJ Won’t Release Full Epstein Files to Congress by Friday Deadline

   This disclosure in fact could well resume the Trump administration: Communication and narrative above facts and truth. 

  Come on, what were we expecting? A timeline of how Epstein became a Mossad asset, specialist in embezzlement and blackmail? Names and charts? Chain of command of an army of shadows with addresses and titles? 

  60 years latter, we still haven't got a full disclosure of the JFK files which likewise implicate the CIA and maybe again the Mossad. The chance that the far more recent hot story of Epstein would be published just because we asked nicely was close to zero to start with. Who's in charge in the US, the President or the CIA? 

  Well, now of course we know. Contrary to what we are made to believe, the story has nothing to do with pedophiles and a few famous people and everything to do with how politicians are controlled behind the curtain. Our democracy is a sham, an illusion for the converted who want to believe. Money votes, not people. Unlike Stalin who famously said, "It is not the people who vote that count but the people who count the votes!" In the West, everything is decided beforehand not a-posteriory. You must go kiss the ring before being anointed by the powerful who pay for your campaign before having a campaign at all. 

  This is what cannot be disclosed: How compromising pictures are taken and used discretely to discredit when necessary and eliminate those who do not serve as expected. That's what is at stake here. The rest is tabloid junk.       

Via: The Hill:

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice (DOJ) would not be releasing the full Epstein files to Congress on Friday as required under new legislation, instead sending over a partial batch.

Blanche told Fox News the Justice Department would release “several hundred thousand” documents on Friday, “and then over the next couple weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more.”

Blanche attributed the delay to the need to redact any names or identifying information about witnesses, but failing to turn over the full unclassified files could run afoul of the law, which gave the department 30 days to share the files with Congress.

“So today is the 30 days when I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today. And those documents will come in in all different forms, photographs and other materials associated with, with all of the investigations into, into Mr. Epstein,” Blanche said.

“What we’re doing is we are looking at every single piece of paper that we are going to produce, making sure that every victim, their name, their identity, their story, to the extent it needs to be protected, is completely protected. And so I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks.”

DOJ was compelled to turn over the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a bill that got near-unanimous support in Congress, signed into law after President Trump reversed his earlier stance opposing their release.

While the bill does allow for redactions related to victims and for DOJ to withhold some information about the investigation, it does not provide a rolling deadline to turn over the documents.

Under the law, the DOJ has 15 days to turn over its rationale for any documents withheld.

UK - The Hades of Birmingham (Video - 45mn)

  Normally I would run away from a video like the one below. But these are not normal times. 

   Birmingham is where the industrial revolution started. You will find not so far away the unbelievable Iron Bridge above built in 1781 from cast iron. This was followed by a century of innovation. Giant steam and later electric machines built in the city at a time when England was an empire. Coal was transported by boat in the canals crisscrossing the urban area.    

  The 20th century was not kind to Birmingham. Industry withered away, downtown was ravaged by German bombs during the second World War then destroyed again by brutalist architects who thought that 4-lane highways snaking around concrete blocks was "modern". This could have been punishment enough but the 21st century had worse in store.   

  10 years ago I was ridiculed when I said that we were heading towards a second middle age. A technological one for sure but from a social standpoint, a time almost as cruel as what our ancestors endured a thousand years ago. We are almost there. Don't believe it? Watch the video then. It is well made and worth the time. Our descendants will probably not understand the meaning of "canary in the coal mine" but homeless under solar panels will probably ring a bell. For this is what utopia and socialism finally brought to Europe.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8La_NOvv77Y

Trump Deal DEAD, Venezuela War Begins | Larry Johnson & Patrick Henningsen (Video - 1h18mn)

   I have seldom heard a more stern indictment of the Trump administration and the man himself and I am afraid they have a point.

  Beyond the narcissism and the hypocrisy, the incompetence is simply stunning. Nobody in this administration seems to know what he is doing, let alone know what he should be doing. There is no strategy, worse not even pretense of one. Trump himself boast that he is unpredictable as if you could build relations with other countries on such foundations. Bullying across the seas has one direct consequence under the surface: A rapid acceleration of the build up of BRICS. 

  Well, if you look carefully, far from the devastated land of Ukraine, there is "one" strategy at play. If you are working for, sorry "with" Israel and consequently want to attack Iran sooner than later, then, you need to secure Venezuela's oil as soon as possible in the likely case where Iran would close the Hormuz Strait to navigation. That much seems to be as far as the American administration can think. When you think that a few short weeks ago, Trump thought he was a worthy contender for the Peace Nobel Prize! (Not that the final recipient was any better, but that's another story.)   

  In the end, as for Europe, propaganda and narrative have taken over. Inflation is down! (not really) Employment is up! (not really) and America is back. That is, if you believe it! But fewer and fewer people believe it and that's a problem because on these tracks Trump is very unlikely to win the midterm elections and could well become a lame-duck president in a year or so. Of course that means another full year of random decisions, gunboat diplomacy and abuse of super-power status. That is, if we avoid a larger war and the bursting of the current everything bubble. A big if for 2026.       

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7IRs16mtA4