CAPITALIST TENTACLES & FRONTS

ANDREI MARTYANOV—Yes, they all are–they all are avatars, holograms with zero capabilities to run anything, and still, who is guilty that this kind of human material gets elected? In Macron’s case, France. French people–they elected him, they fell for his utter BS and agreed for their country to be finished off. Same goes for the United States–no matter what were the manipulations at the ballot box–the fact that half the country voted for a senile, demented, con-artist and swamp creature–sorry guys, you wanted, you got it. [Not that the vile incumbent nincompoop was much better, both representing essentially the same oligarchy.—Ed] Now live with the consequences.

THE SAKER—According to the KP investigators, these guys have legal contracts and they pay Russian income taxes. So this is all very legal and quite pluralistic to boot: the only people who can seriously accuse the Russian government of trying to crack down on the opposition, pro-western political parties or anti-Putin ideas are folks who have absolutely no factual knowledge about Russia *at all*. Either that, or they are deliberately lying. And that includes the vast majority of the western political leaders (in the USA and in Europe) who are now scrambling to increase the budgets of the traditional western propaganda outfits such as VOA/RL/RFE or who want to create new propaganda outlets to “bring the democratic message to the Russian people”. In reality, the Russian people are fed a daily dose of western propaganda (aka “democratic message”) courtesy of the Kremlin, and that is something which the imbeciles in power in the West can’t even begin to imagine, nevermind deal with.

MICHAEL HUDSON—Chevron’s operation proved to be as disastrous an ecological horror story as it had caused in Ecuador. It was fined $303 million for violating environmental protection laws, but pressured President Nazarbayev to repeal the fine to show the world how ‘investor-friendly’ Kazakhstan was! When popular opposition arose to demand a fair contract, international investors, the response by international investors and Western government officials and their front men at the IMF, World Bank and USAID was to claim that renegotiation would violate the rule of law and sanctity of contracts.

P. GREANVILLE—More than a year into the pandemic and I still find it hard to locate easily digestible facts for what should be a straightforward question: How much is Big Pharma charging for an average vaccine shot? The leading TV journos have pretty much ignored the topic, as if it did not matter, supposedly (I presume that’s their convenient rationale) because the government, as if by magic, is making the jabs free to the public, anyhow. But, friends, without going libertarian, we all know that when the government pays, WE pay, ultimately, because the moneys laid out are our taxes, our money —well so they say. (Contrary to common assumption, the government, which does NOT operate like a household, need not balance the books nor rely on taxes alone for its expenditures).

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