Russia and China will face substantial difficulty in their efforts to create an alternative to the US dollar in international trade, American Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed on Thursday.

Russia is conducting a rapid withdrawal from transactions in “unfriendly” currencies, against the backdrop of expanding EU and US sanctions. Moscow has been shifting towards the ruble and local

Webmaster addition:

Continued interest rate hikes by the Fed could worsen the banking turmoil, according to Bill Ackman

The US economy is facing disaster following another interest rate increase by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury’s rejection of full deposit insurance, billionaire investor Bill Ackman has warned.

“When combined with the higher cost of debt and deposits due to rising rates, consider what the impact will be on lending rates and our economy,” Ackman wrote on Twitter on Wednesday. “The longer this banking crisis is allowed to continue, the greater the damage to smaller banks and their ability to access low-cost capital,” he added.

The billionaire’s warning follows the US central bank’s decision to raise rates by 25 basis points. On Wednesday, the Fed lifted its benchmark rate to a 4.75%-5% range as it continues to combat inflation.

The United States struck Iranian-linked groups in Syria on Thursday after a US contractor was killed and five military service members and another US contractor were wounded in a purported drone strike. 

The Pentagon said the US casualties were suffered on a base near Hasakah in the northeast part of the country, when a "one-way, unmanned, aerial vehicle" hit a maintenance facility at 1:38 pm local time. The statement said intelligence assessed the drone to be "of Iranian origin." 

Three service members and the surviving U.S. contractor were medically evacuated to military medical facilities in Iraq. Two service members were treated at the base. No details were provided about which military branches the service members were affiliated with, nor the identity of the contractors. 

The reason that the FBI has done nothing with the multiple crimes found on the Hunter Biden laptop may be because Hunter has a mole in the FBI.  The FBI has had the laptop since 2019 and has not pursued any of the crimes revealed on the computer.

An FBI mole named “one-eye” may be protecting Hunter Biden and the Biden family from being indicted for the many crimes found on the Hunter Biden laptop.

Hunter Biden had an FBI mole named “One-Eye” who tipped off his Chinese business partners that they were under investigation, according to an Israeli energy expert arrested in Cyprus last month on gunrunning charges.

The House Oversight Committee is investigating the explosive claims by Dr. Gal Luft, a former Israel Defense Forces lieutenant colonel with deep intelligence ties in Washington and Beijing, who says he was arrested to stop him from revealing what he knows about the Biden family and FBI corruption — details he told the Department of Justice in 2019, which he says it ignored.

Given that the U.S. and its NATO vassals are fixing for a fight with Russia over the Ukraine situation, what might we all expect if the m1a1 can hit things 8200 feet away, but the Russian T-90M can hit things twice as far?   

Andrey Pyshniy, Head of the Central Bank of Ukraine was able to buy his Rolls Royce Ghost, worth $400,000.

How much of that was skimmed off US "military aid?"

Keep forking-over more money, America.  You can SEE all the good it's doing in Ukraine.

Something's up.    Several UNIQUE and very important vessels for early-warning-detection of nuclear missile launches, have been suddenly deployed from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 

Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX-1) a floating, self-propelled, mobile active electronically scanned array early-warning radar station, shown below leaving Pearl Harbor under tow - March 23, 2023:

The Sea-Based X-Band Radar (SBX-1) is a floating, self-propelled, mobile active electronically scanned array early-warning radar station is designed to operate in high winds and heavy seas. It was developed as part of the United States Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The radar is mounted on a fifth generation CS-50 twin-hulled semi-submersible oil platform. Conversion of the vessel was carried out at the AmFELS yard in Brownsville, Texas; the radar mount was built and mounted on the vessel at the Kiewit yard in Ingleside, Texas.

It is nominally based at Adak Island in Alaska, but has spent significant time at Pearl Harbor in test status.   When it departed Pearl Harbor today, it was ***NOT*** on any heading back toward Alaska.  It seems to be heading out into the Pacific toward . . .  Asia.

Azerbaijan has a long border with Iran, which needs defending, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said answering provocative questions from pro-Armenian Democratic Senator Bob Menendez….

Menendez was expressing concern with the US providing military education to Azerbaijan.

Blinken reminded that that were practical reasons for that.

EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday are set to endorse a deal to ramp up the supply of artillery shells to Ukraine…diplomats say.

The two-day European Council summit, which is also to focus on other issues, including energy supply, has been attended by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at a working lunch on Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also addressed the meeting via video.

“We will, as always, reaffirm our unwavering commitment to assist Ukraine,” declared Charles Michel, president of the European Council, in his invitation.

According to a new AEI analysis, since the start of the Ukraine invasion, 37 nations have combined to announce defense spending increases of over $1 trillion, to be spent during the next five years.

…The end of the Cold War and the last Great Power competition of the 20th century initiated a belief among the allies that military spending was wasteful and unnecessary. Countries didn’t need to actually defend their territories, since large scale conventional wars were seen as relics of the past….

The majority of NATO countries have pledged to increase their spending in the last year. Just as significantly, important Asian allies…have made their own planned increases known. What is most remarkable about this sea change in planned spending is that US allies have pledged to increase spending at much higher year-over-year rates than the US is currently planning. And more increases may be on the way as new allied spending promises continue to be revealed, the latest being the UK prime minister announcing a further $6 billion defense budget increase over the next two years.

AS MANHATTAN DISTRICT Attorney Alvin Bragg moves toward an indictment of Donald Trump, two predictable camps are forming: His critics are hungry for justice for a lawless operator, and his supporters are furious at what they see as rank political persecution. But there’s a third faction: people who hate everything Trump stands for — but fear that Bragg’s case is far from the strongest option when it comes to holding the former president accountable.

That camp includes some high-powered attorneys in New York City’s vaunted legal community, including litigators who fear Bragg has a weak case built on shaky grounds — and that his indictment could undermine more promising proceedings related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election or his hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

“This case is a joke, frankly, and I’ve litigated against that office for 33 years,” said longtime New York criminal-defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, who has counted Mexican drug lord El Chapo among his many high-profile clients. “I don’t think that case is winnable.”

Roughly 200 Israeli Air Force reserve pilots reportedly notified their units that they would not be reporting for their weekly flying session next week following the announcement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday night that the government will move forward with its plan to overhaul the judiciary, despite widespread public protest.

The failure to report for weekly training sessions has serious implications because pilots who miss them are not certified to fly operational missions.

The protesters included pilots from different branches of the IAF including those who fly combat missions, helicopters and transport planes, Channel 12 reported, without citing a source.

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers.

According to Science Alert, The space agency’s satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

The 21st Theater Sustainment Command will receive, stage and transport equipment supporting the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division’s Atlantic Resolve rotation from ports in Esbjerg, Denmark; Riga, Latvia; and Thessaloniki, Greece, during late March and mid-April.

Working with the 598th Transportation Brigade;…NATO Allies and host nations Denmark, Latvia, and Greece; respective port authorities and European vendors, 21st TSC will ensure nearly 2,000 pieces of equipment, including aviation assets, arrive at their final destinations at multiple sites in eastern Europe.

 Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the emergence of nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be a "golden dream" for Washington.

"The US deployed its nuclear weapons on the territory of European countries. It’s not France and the UK that have their own nuclear weapons. This is Italy and many other countries that possess the US nuclear weapons but they do not have access to them. The US controls them there. It was a golden dream that it would appear in Ukraine," she said in an interview with Vladimir Solovyov on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has some disturbing skeletons in her family wardrobe.

Her political roots in Nazi Germany account for the insane war-driven agenda of the European Union toward Russia under her stewardship and her total subservience to the U.S. imperialist objective to defeat Moscow.

Author Evan Reif explains how her politician-father Ernst Albrecht packed his regional government with unreconstructed Nazis and former Wehrmacht officers when he was governor of Lower Saxony in the 1980s.

Ursula von der Leyen’s family derived much of its industrial wealth from working closely with Hitler’s Third Reich. Her aristocratic family was also married into slave-owning cotton planters in the American South.

Just how important would you say the European Parliament is, both on a local (European) level and internationally? In a pro-European Belgian newspaper in around 2001 I remember reading the results of a survey of Europeans with over 70 percent agreeing that the institution was an important body, while almost 80 percent admitting they didn’t really know what it did.

The European Parliament’s role often comes into question both by the staunch supporters of the EU and those who have lost faith in the EU as a whole. Recently, it was interesting to see MoroccoGate of QatarGate take up a lot of EU media oxygen as a bribery scandal rocked the very foundations of the parliament forcing its president to act quickly and suspend the MEPs who were milking their positions and the EU for everything they could get. Notably, these MEPs were all fiercely pro-EU, at least in theory glancing at their political stripes (socialists) but in reality you could easily argue that they had no belief in the project as a whole, given that they were happy to piss in its soup.

Moscow will take retaliatory measures in case Russian media outlets and journalists face pressure in Germany, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Thursday.

"The German media have published information on the matter, which was provided by the German authorities and makes it clear that despite official statements, particularly from [German Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock - and she said in Moscow that they don’t interfere in the situation - that they not only interfere but they also pay for and moderate content; they did this in the past and they are doing it now," Zakharova noted, when asked if German media outlets working in Russia would face any consequences following the German government’s statements about journalists’ ties to intelligence agencies.

"If Russian journalists in Germany are harassed, there will be retaliatory measures against German journalists," Zakharova said.