☕️ PROVOCATIVE ☙ Saturday, April 13, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Powerless ships drift toward bridges; Russia describes terms for Ukraine; US prepares for Iran war; FBI Director counts the terrors; FISA renewal surprises; anti-vaxxers get help; Fla. advisory; more.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday — time for the Weekend Edition! Your mega-roundup today includes: Twenty six powerless barges floating toward more bridges, coincidentally; Russia says some powerful things about the Proxy War in Moscow and at the UN; the US prepares for “imminent” war with Iran; the FBI director cites “unprecedented” levels of domestic terror threats; what those three world events have to do with each other; Congress passes FISA renewal but warrant vote remains on life support; anti-vaxx movement gains a valuable new ally; and Florida may be many things, most of them good, but there’s one thing you should know before you move here.

🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞

🔥 Here we go again!  CNN ran a story this morning headlined, “26 barges break loose and float down Ohio River, causing damage and prompting bridge closures in Pittsburgh, officials say.” Coincidentally!

While it’s not new — barges broke loose in 2012 and 2019, that I could find — the scale of this event is at least twice as large as the next largest example. Some of yesterday’s 26 loosed barges have sunk, closing the river to commercial transit. Supply chain alert. Two auto bridges plus a rail bridge are closed out of an abundance of caution, and at least one dam remains potentially at risk. The barges’ marina apparently took “extensive damage” since most of the barges were fully loaded.

Like the cargo ships.

Maybe this time the cause of this nascent disaster will not forever remain a baffling mystery, as have the other recent infrastructure att…accidents. Maybe this one will be more like what always used to happen. Maybe some chagrined dock master will explain how the chains gave way that should’ve been replaced 20 years ago, and we’ll get pictures of the severed chains and nothing will sketchy.

Or maybe not. It’s a developing story. I’ll let you know if anything of interest develops.

🚀 Now for the big picture. This morning we shall connect three seemingly unrelated major stories that form a remarkable working hypothesis for the state of the world.

Let’s start with Ukraine, since the Proxy War is — I believe — the central, internal engine propelling the West’s clown car around the World’s circus ring in expanding circles. (The non-western countries are the clowns dodging the car.)

Vassily Alekseevich Nebenzya is Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. While he does strangely resemble Uncle Fester, he is also a very serious person, chipped off the Soviet Empire’s saturnine block of perpetually unamused Cold War-era diplomats. Yesterday, while addressing the UN Security Council about Ukraine’s recent attacks on the Zaporohznia nuclear power plant, Nebenzya slipped in a short sentence at the end of his remarks that dropped a MOAB on the Proxy War-watching internet.

CLIP: Nebenza drops truth bomb (fully transcribed below, 0:36).

On Thursday, Nebenza updated the members of the UN security council on the prospects of negotiating peace with Ukraine. He said time was running out — implying it is still possible for a consensual resolution to the conflict, for now — but then starkly defined what the only acceptable terms will become, very soon:

It will go down in history as an inhuman and misanthropic regime of terrorists and Nazis who betrayed the interests of their people and sacrified them for Western money and handouts for Zelensky and his inner circle.

Under these conditions, the attempts of the head of the Kiev regime to promote his own ‘formula’ and convene summits in support of the Kiev regime are only bewildering.

Very soon, the only topic for any international meetings on Ukraine will be the unconditional surrender of the Kiev regime. I advise all of you to prepare for this in advance.

The war bloggers were buzzing because it’s the first time the Russians have invoked the term “unconditional surrender.” The commenters took it seriously and not as bluster, which compares unfavorably with the Biden Administration, whose members are constantly blustering and nobody takes them seriously.

That particular phrase is fraught with meaning for Americans, since the country’s best general and 28th President was jokingly nicknamed “Unconditional Surrender” Grant.

While still just a Brigadier General of Volunteers, right after the Civil War started in early 1862, Grant famously led an attack on Confederate-controlled Fort Donelson. As the battle progressed, Confederate commander Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner proposed a temporary truce to “discuss terms of surrender,” probably hoping for a generous deal. But Grant wrote back, “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.”

Grant, whose first initials perfectly fit the part, got a new nickname and a no-nonsense reputation in the North that fueled his meteoric rise through the ranks to the entire Union army’s ultimate command and then the Presidency. Anyway, I digress, but it’s a great story and reinforces the fact the U.S. appreciates the gravity of unconditional surrender.

🚀 On the same day — Thursday — President Putin of Russia and President Lukashenko of Belarus (Ukraine’s northern neighbor) met in Moscow, and Putin said some important things. Corporate media has embargoed the public meeting, highlighting its significance. Here is the link to the transcript on the Kremlin’s website.

The first interesting comment was Putin’s description of how at the start of the war, a peace deal had aready been negotiated and signed by Ukraine. But then the West (specifically, Britian) convinced Ukraine to break the deal, but only after tricking Russia into moving its troops out of Kiev:

We didn't start this war. It all started with a coup d'état in Ukraine in 2014. And then, when everything acquired such a "hot" character, you (Lukashenko) initiated peace negotiations in Belarus.

Then the negotiation teams moved to Istanbul, Turkey. They almost completed this great work; it took a long time, and was initialed by both sides. The documents were initialed by the Ukrainian side. The agreements were initialed.

But as you know, under pressure from the West, the Ukrainian side abandoned the agreements. We were told that we could not complete the agreements then because Ukraine could not sign "with a gun at the temple.” So it was first necessary to withdraw our troops from Kiev. We did it. Immediately after we withdrew, our agreements were thrown into the trash.

That story is not widely known in the West, due to a surplus of official and unoffocial disinformation over how the war started. Even certain commenters on this blog have repeatedly implied that Ukrainian forces defeated the Russians in Kiev, rather than tricking them into leaving by breaking a peace deal.

Or, maybe that is a sort of victory, even if an unsavory one. No rules in war, and so forth.

Anyway, much more significant for current events, Putin next told the Belarussian president that Russia remains ready to return to the negotiating table, starting from the already-initialed Instanbul agreements. “We are ready to work constructively,” Putin drawled. Then, “But of course, there can be no imposition on us any position that is not based on realities.”

Meaning, the Ukrainians should now — two years of hard fighting later — expect to give up more than what was agreed in Istanbul. If I had to guess, Russia will want to keep the acquired territories.

For a variety of reasons, including that the original Istanbul agreements forbid Ukraine’s NATO membership and required its demilitarization and de-nazification, I doubt the Ukrainians will be allowed to negotiate terms anytime soon.

So it will be unconditional surrender, if the Russians can pull it off. Now let’s talk about Iran.

🚀 In a sure signal of a narrative-defining psyop, corporate media blanketed the digital airwaves yesterday with stories about Iran’s imminent attack on Israel — any second now! — and about Glorious Leader Biden’s bellicose warnings for Iran. CNN Politics ran one of the many stories this morning, headlined “US expects Iran to carry out direct attack on Israel, sources say, as Biden warns ‘don’t.’”

It’s not just an “expectation” of an attack. The Wall Street Journal’s lead story this morning is headlined, “Exclusive | U.S. Moves Warships to Defend Israel in Case of Iranian Attack.”

Yesterday, without explaining the legality of making this warlike promise to Israel without Congressional approval, and defying the majority of the anti-Israel democrat party base, Biden vowed to prevent Iran from attacking Israel:

The Journal and all the other lying corporate media, used journalistic sleight of hand to obscure the real reason the Iranians are upset. Here’s how the Journal described what happened:

Note the use of the words, “Tehran said.” That rhetorical construction is carefully crafted to cast doubt on the facts. To see how, mentally replace the highlighted words in the paragraph above with the word “after,” and see how that changes the meaning. If you stop and think about it even for a second, which most busy people don’t, you’ll see how senseless that trick is.

Doesn’t the Journal know whether it was an Israeli airstrike? Why use “Tehran said?” Why not just admit it was the Israelis? The reason is because this way, the reader is manipulated into a sense that the Iranians, who haven’t even done anything yet, are nevertheless overreacting. And of course, the Journal minimized the location of the strike. Sure, it was a “diplomatic building.” It was also the diplomatic annex of the Iranian Embassy.

In 1998, after Al-Qaeda forces attacked the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Tanzania, we launched Operation Infinite Reach. Just saying.

But there’s a bigger trick being played on the Journal’s readers. After basing the entire justification for the U.S.’s oversized response on Iranian threats of retaliation, the Journal’s entire long-form article fails to cite a single explicit threat. A moment’s consideration concludes that, after any country’s embassy is attacked, it is not news for that country to pledge retaliation. It’s practically automatic.

Laughably, late in the article the Journal cited some angry anti-Israel social media posts from accounts “associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.” We’re supposed to believe we are going to war over social media posts? That’s scraping the bottom of the journalistic barrel.

If a country doesn’t pledge to retaliate after an embassy attack with fatalities, it invites more attacks on its other embassies, and angers its citizens, who at that time of crisis need to see the government standing up for their sovereignty.

Of course Iran threatened to retaliate. What else were they supposed to do?

The Journal’s story should have been: the reasons why Israel is starting a war with Iran; or, what exactly is different about Iran’s completely understandable threats justifying a belligerent, escalatory, outsized response by the United States?

Let me be clear. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t help protect Israel from any enemy. Opinions vary, but I think we should. The issue is whether the strike on the Iranian embassy was Israel’s idea or … someone else’s.

So here’s the point. Joe Biden can’t stop babbling threats against Iran. The U.S. is rushing even more naval assets into position near Israel. Corporate media is preparing the country’s mental battlespace for war with Iran. It’s being framed as an imminent threat:

And now some people are starting to smell something funny. They are starting to wonder whether Iran is the real threat, or maybe something else is going on.

🔥 Now I’ll add the third puzzle piece. Yesterday, FBI Director Chris Wray testified to Congress (encouraging FISA renewal) and listed a long, long list of domestic threats, which he said was “just scratching the surface.” In fact, Wray said he has never seen such an elevated threat environment, ever:

CLIP: FBI Director terrifies Congress and America with scary list of domestic threats (1:14).

The Director’s parade of horribles included foreign terrorists, cartels, drug dealers, fentanyl, Chinese technology thieves, ransomeware attacks, and threats to critical infrastructure. In a bit of dark humor, one of Wray’s many enumerated threats was “serious violent crime,” which Joe Biden and the disinformation democrats keep lyingly claiming has come down since the Trump administration.

In other words, Wray terrified Congress so they’d vote to renew warrantless FISA surveillance of Americans. But is there more?

🔥 Now let’s tie these developments together with a ribbon of conspiracy thinking. Some people (e.g. below, 150,000 followers) took Biden’s unqualified, absolutist pledge to go to war with Iran as maybe Biden is trying to provoke Iran into doing something:

War blogger Brian Berletic agrees (62,000 followers):

And perhaps unintentionally, the Economist (allegedly 27 million followers, but only 54 likes 🙄) implicitly agreed, tweeting after Israel’s embassy attack but before the Biden Plan shifted into gear, and hiding its meaning in the passive voice:

But why? If Biden is trying to provoke Iran — which seems completely reasonable to me — it seems more likely to be for reasons such as blaming Iran (and stingy Republicans) for what is about to happen to Ukraine, and so the U.S. can enter a wartime period where mailaway voting rules might be loosened up again, just like last election cycle.

That’s all kooky talk, of course. Our neocon leaders by nature may be aggressive, belligerent, and provocative, but they aren’t crazy. They’re not crazy, right? Right? I mean, they wouldn’t provoke an Israeli-Iranian war and invite retaliatory domestic terror attacks in America just to grease the skids for more mail-in balloting? That’s too far even for them. Isn’t it?

Surely they couldn’t be that incompetent?

🔥 The FISA vote went down yesterday just as expected, but it offered two surprises.  USA Today ran the story under the headline, “Fourth time's the charm: House passes controversial spying bill after bitter infighting.” FISA is the deeply-flawed, deep-state surveillance law that allowed the FBI to secretly spy on President Trump and his allies during the 2015 campaign.

I like Speaker Johnson. I want to like him. I even have a theory to explain what happened yesterday in a (slightly) more favorable way, but the hard fact is Speaker Johnson cast a tie-breaking vote yesterday defeating an amendment that would have added a warrant requirement to the FISA renewal bill.

That was the first surprise.

The warrant requirement was always a poison amendment. Had the warrant amendment passed, its effect would have been to kill FISA renewal for the fourth consecutive time. It is not realistic that FISA renewal could have passed with the warranting amendment.

It’s also important to consider that President Trump, who railed against FISA renewal, did not criticize Speaker Johnson after the vote. And later, when Trump delivered some remarks about Biden’s Middle East incompetence yesterday, Johnson was standing right by Trump’s side. So.

For what it’s worth, my theory is that without FISA, it would be much easier for Biden to declare a state of emergency, especially if he can get war with Iran heating up. And Biden could blame Republicans who blocked FISA when he did it. So FISA had to be renewed. That’s my theory. I realize it’s not completely satisfactory.

Anyway, the second surprise was that standout Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna employed a rare parliamentary maneuver to cancel the FISA amendment vote, so the vote will have to be taken for the fifth time anyway:

We only need one changed vote to bring back the warrant requirement. This would be a great time to call your congressman to say you want them to vote in favor of the FISA warrant requirement. Find Your Representative.

💉 It’s another pandemic miracle! Highly-credentialed, well-spoken, and persuasive covid doc Peter McCullough has now come all the way over to questioning not just covid jabs — but all childhood vaccines. He is now even uttering the dreaded word, “autism.”  See for yourself:

CLIP: Dr. Peter McCullough questions the Childhood Vaccine Schedule (2:28).

Among other things, in the clip Dr. McCullough described how every single study of kids who went “natural” — didn’t take any jabs — outperformed vaccinated kids in every health category, including autism. So. In any sane world, that evidence should damn the vaccine industry and result in a shot moratorium until they can figure out where they went wrong.

This progress never would have happened without covid. You crazy “anti-vaxxers” have got a lot of powerful new allies. I’m not saying covid would be worth it if it results in destruction of the vaccine industry, but it’s something to think about.

🔥 Having repeatedly extolled Florida’s many virtues, I now feel compelled to issue a public service advisory to anyone considering moving here. This can happen:

We don’t get earthquakes or mega-tornadoes, but we do get mosquitos, palmetto bugs — nightmarish, prehistoric flying cockroaches — and the occasional alligator in the kitchen. So, FYI.

Have a wonderful weekend! Decline Biden’s fear vaccine and head back here in the morning on Monday to start the week off right with a brand new, optimistic Coffee & Covid roundup.

We can’t do it without you. Consider joining with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds.  I could use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:  ☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

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