Wednesday, November 20, 2024

‘World War III has already begun,’ Jamie Dimon warns — says he and his team are preparing for serious conflict with Russia, China

"Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told the crowd that war was imminent and nuclear proliferation was a greater existential threat than climate change.
World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries,” Dimon said at the annual event in Washington, DC.
Dimon also claimed the cooperation between ChinaRussiaIran, and North Korea to dismantle the Western world order far outweighed any financial issues.
Western powers, including NATO allies, have been pitted against Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Meanwhile, North Korea has sent an estimated 12,000 soldiers to fight with Russia in Ukraine.
Iran has become involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict, firing missiles on the West’s closest ally in the Middle East, and tensions continue to rise with China following its crackdown in Hong Kong and threatening Taiwan's sovereignty.
JPMorgan Chase has “run scenarios that will shock you” in preparation for a global conflict, Dimon told the audience." MS

North Korea Sent a Mystery Man to Lead Its Troops Fighting Ukraine

"In a country that fetes its military elites like celebrities, Col. Gen. Kim Yong Bok was rarely seen—or even mentioned—in public. His role leading North Korea’s special forces required him to keep a low profile to conceal his identity. But now he is a very public figure.
He is the top
North Korean military official in Russia, where more than 11,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to aid Moscow’s efforts to dislodge Ukrainian troops who have seized a chunk of Russian territory.
Kyiv and Seoul officials have confirmed his presence in
Russia. The number of dispatched North Korean soldiers to Russia could ultimately reach as high as 100,000, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday. He didn’t cite specific evidence for the claim.
Col. Gen. Kim isn’t expected to see any combat himself. But the dispatch of one of North Korea’s most important military officials signals North Korea’s interest in assisting Russia deep into next year." MS

'Jews & Homosexuals Are No Longer Safe In Berlin', Warns City's Police Chief

"Jews and homosexuals are no longer safe in Berlin and should hide their identity in certain neighborhoods, Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik has claimed. Slowik pointed to neighborhoods with large Arab populations as particular areas of concern." ZeroHedge

Obama-Biden-Clinton nuclear giveaway to Russia a decade ago comes back to bite America

"The U.S. nuclear energy sector’s dependence on Russian uranium created during a failed Obama-era reset with Moscow is coming back to bite Americans as the Kremlin moves to block future exports of the vital fuel.
Putin’s new restrictions on uranium exports to the U.S., announced last week, come as the country’s war in Ukraine continues to heighten tensions with the United States and the West. His announcement created an immediate impact, as uranium prices soared and worries grew that American utilities might have trouble meeting electric demand next year.
It's the latest fallout from a series of foreign policy decisions crafted by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton that inexplicably strengthened Putin's ability to wage economic warfare with energy supplies such as natural gas and uranium.
[The] United States used to produce its own nuclear materials for bombs and then for nuclear energy, and it was the Clinton administration they made this deal with the Russians way back in the 90s to purchase all of this down blended material from, you know, the decommission nuclear warheads from Russia,” Seamus Bruner, co-author of the book, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. “That got us addicted to Russia's supply,” he said, explaining that it led to a cratering of domestic supply.
Two deals, which took place during Obama’s vaunted "Russian Reset" that began in 2009, cemented the United States’ dependence on Russia nuclear fuel, Bruner said.
[The] Obama administration certainly wasn't friendly. They made the famous deals with Russia, the [123 Agreement]; everybody remembers the uranium one deal, which was about nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons,” Bruner said.
And so now we're in this tough spot. Now we do have domestic producers, who are, you know, producing uranium for our energy needs, but there are no way, there's no way they're going to catch up.”
As part of the flurry of diplomacy between the former Cold War rivals, the Obama administration penned the new 123 Agreement with the Kremlin, which was designed to increase cooperation on civil nuclear energy and further commercial opportunities between the two economies. The administration also signed new arms control and technology cooperation agreements as part of the diplomatic push.
The deal led to billions of dollars in contracts for U.S. utilities to buy Russian uranium to power their nuclear reactors.
Around the same time the agreements were taking shape, however, Putin’s state-controlled nuclear company, Rosatom, was making moves to corner the global supply.
The Russian company’s efforts to acquire a Canadian company, Uranium One, became a scandal for the Obama administration because it saw the virtual elimination of U.S. domestic production of uranium and raised corruption concerns about some of its chief officials.
The the Uranium One deal was about shuttering our domestic mines, we had all of these uranium mines across…the Rocky Mountains…and closer towards the west, Midwest, that shut down the domestic production there, which was a boon to Putin, who had purchased, in addition to the mines in the United States, a bunch of mines in Kazakhstan,” Bruner said.
And those are where he's able to pull out a ton of uranium and enrich it for civilian purposes, ostensibly, and and then sell it back to us at a premium.”
Before the Russian takeover, Uranium One was a Canadian company that mined Uranium around the world, with assets in Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Its facilities in Wyoming, Utah, and other states accounted for approximately 20% of U.S. uranium capacity at the time, necessitating a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to approve an acquisition by the Russia state-backed company.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on that committee and had a prominent role in shaping the administration’s foreign policy. The acquisition became a scandal that plagued her 2016 presidential campaign after investigative author Peter Schweizer and his Government Accountability Institute found nine Uranium One shareholders funneled $145 million into the Clinton Foundation before the deal was set to be considered.
The acquisition was subsequently approved, though Clinton’s team has repeatedly denied that the secretary had a major role in approving the sale.
Both Congress and President Biden, who had a front row seat to the reset, at least appeared to recognize the danger caused by the past missteps, but could do little to wean the U.S. off Russia’s supply before now.
Shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Congress passed and Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act ostensibly to free the U.S. nuclear industry from dependence on Russia. Yet, the law only requires an end to U.S. imports of nuclear fuel from Russia completely by 2028, providing a waiver system in the intervening years.
“It was a terrible decision to make us dependent on on imports of uranium from Russia,” former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Fleitz said the waiver system established by the law revealed how underdeveloped the United States’ domestic uranium production is, something Putin eagerly exploited last week.
But utilities could ask for waivers, with the understanding it will take a long time for us to establish domestic sources of your reactor grade uranium,” Fleitz said. “The Russians knew that, and they're going to cut this off, and our reactors will have no where to go to get uranium. Just the News

Over Half of Czechs Not Willing to Defend Their Country If Necessary - Poll

"More than half of people in the Czech Republic are not prepared to defend their country if necessary, according to a survey by NMS Market Research.
The Nation's Memory survey conducted by NMS Market Research revealed that four-fifths of Czechs believe that the security situation in Europe has worsened due to the conflict in Ukraine. Two-thirds of respondents fear that the conflict will escalate beyond Ukraine's borders. Most worryingly, more than half of Czechs would not be willing to protect their country if necessary. Only two out of ten respondents have a positive view of the country's military preparedness. At the same time, only 29% of respondents are ready to take part in the defense of the country, with 19% unable to give a clear answer, the Tuesday survey reads.
In addition, respondents from the country's opposition are five times less supportive of Ukraine and twice as unwilling to defend the Czech Republic as supporters of the ruling party. Some 67% of respondents believe that NATO membership strengthens the country's defense capabilities, while the same percentage believe that Prague must enter a conflict if a member of the alliance is threatened. Two-thirds of respondents believe that NATO would provide direct military support to the country in the event of a direct threat, according to the survey.
Some 94% of respondents fear an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine." Sputnik

Biden approves provision of antipersonnel mines to Ukraine

"U.S. President Joe Biden has authorized the provision of American antipersonnel mines to
Ukraine. The United States had a stockpile of about 3 million antipersonnel land mines as of 2022. The mines had not been used since 1991.
Biden had been reluctant to supply Ukraine with the mines in the face of concerns within his own administration and from a wide range of anti-mine advocates who say the risk to civilians is unacceptably high. But Russia’s battlefield progress in recent months has forced the White House to find fresh ways to help Kyiv." Ukrin

Ukraine's ATACMS Strike On Russia Comes After Putin Lowers Threshold For Nukes

"About a day after President Biden authorized Ukraine to use the long-range US-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System to strike deeper into Russian territory, a new report
suggests that the
Ukrainian Armed Forces have hit a military installation in the western Bryansk region. This comes after Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia's nuclear weapons doctrine was changed and signed by President Vladimir Putin, indicating "the use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response."
"For the first time, Ukraine's Defense Forces struck Russian territory with ATACMS ballistic missiles," RBC Ukraine news agency reported Tuesday." ZeroHedge