Avril Haines: US intelligence chief intervenes to block state secrets in Saudi Crown Prince's feud with former Saudi official @ MSN Article.

Brent Jamin Budowsky (born 29-Feb-1952) is an American political opinion writer and columnist for The Hill. See Wikipedia entry.

D.J. who moonlights as a titan of Wall Street, David Solomon is a crossover media-finance bullshit artist. Under him, Goldman Sachs - the investment bank - has tried to shed its uptight image as a haven for besuited M.&A. bankers and chest-thumping traders. That effort now includes its own typeface. Meet Goldman Sans. The firm describes the font, which is free to download, as “approachable without being whimsical” and “neutral, with a wink.” It was created for Goldman Sachs by the British design firm Dalton Maag, with a mandate to create a typeface with just the right amount of personality for the 151-year-old bank.

It follows other efforts by Goldman to come across as cool, including relaxing its dress code, pitching itself as a tech company and collaborating with Apple on a credit card. The reaction from experts is, shall we say, mixed. They are on record saying that it suffered from “lack of courage,” was “missing life” and was the typographical equivalent of “a casual Friday.”

Retired stock analyst covering the housing, mortgage and consumer finance industries. US investment strategist and portfolio manager. Work career at PaineWebber and UBS, an adjunct professor at Mercy College in New York. Written articles about - for example - AMC where Gordon advocates sell the stock, exposing reasons why it's going to drop, telling the audience to get out while the going is good. Turns out he's got a lot of AMC stock and he's short on it!

Harry Reid Wikipedia

Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) on Twitter | Latest Tweets from Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko). Defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent. War, weapons, beer & heavy metal. A village guy from Donbas in a crusade for something better. Kyiv, Ukraine. US/UK/NATO deep state funded.

The Kyiv Independent newspaper - propaganda cutout

Journalist: Illia Ponomarenko is the defense and security reporter at the Kyiv Independent. He has reported about the war in eastern Ukraine since the conflict’s earliest days. He covers national security issues, as well as military technologies, production, and defense reforms in Ukraine. Besides, he gets deployed to the war zone of Donbas with Ukrainian combat formations. He has also had deployments to Palestine and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an embedded reporter with UN peacekeeping forces. Illia won the Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship and was selected to work as USA Today's guest reporter at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Joe Biden assured rich donors at a fundraiser (Carlyle Hotel, NYC) if elected, he would not "demonise" the rich and promised that "no one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change."

Biden said that poverty was "the one thing that can bring this country down" but to this donors: "I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money... The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it's all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change."

Biden went on to say that the rich should not be blamed for income inequality, pleading to the donors: "I need you very badly... I hope if I win this nomination, I won't let you down. I promise you."

Biden also complained that some Democrats criticised his eagerness to work with Republicans after they spent years blocking President Obama's agenda and moving further right. Biden pointed out that his ability to work with segregationists like former Mississippi Sen. James O. Eastland and Georgia Sen. Herman Talmadge showed that he could "bring people together." (The Washington Post).

Joe Biden: "I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy,' he always called me 'son.'" He also called Talmadge "one of the meanest guys I ever knew." "Well, guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you're the enemy. Not the opposition -- the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore. I know the new 'New Left' tells me that I'm -- this is old-fashioned... Well guess what? If we can't reach a consensus in our system, what happens? It encourages and demands the abuse of power by a president. That's what it does. You have to be able to reach consensus under our system -- our constitutional system of separation of powers."

Neoliberal US Cathedral - Ken Dilanian - Intelligence and National Security Correspondent @ MUCKRACK PROFILE on the neoliberal shill index at muckrack.com website.

Mark Reed Wikipedia

The former House speaker Paul Ryan is reportedly preparing to launch a special purpose acquisition company, The Wall Street Journal reports. The investment fund is aiming to raise $300 million in an I.P.O., with Mr. Ryan, who left Congress last year, as chairman. He’s not the only famous face joining the SPAC boom. Figures from financiers like Bill Ackman, Dan Loeb and Michael Klein to the famed baseball executive Billy Beane have launched versions of these “blank check” investment vehicles. They have been buoyed by strong equity markets and private companies’ desire to sidestep the traditionally laborious I.P.O. process by merging with these funds, assuming their stock listings.

This SPAC is notable for its Republican ties. In addition to Mr. Ryan’s involvement, the fund’s sponsor is Solamere Capital, an investment firm run by a son of Senator Mitt Romney, who picked Mr. Ryan as his running mate in his 2012 presidential bid. But its financial adviser has strong Democratic leanings. Mr. Ryan’s SPAC is being underwritten by Evercore, whose founder and senior chairman is Roger Altman, who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations and is a major fund-raiser for Joe Biden.

Evercore has been strengthening its SPAC expertise, hiring Neil Shah, a specialist in these funds, from Citi last year. The bank has also emphasized its capital-markets business of late: Executives told analysts last month that the firm was coming off its “strongest period ever in equity underwriting.”

Four star American Army general and entrenched neoliberal character actor, Stanley A McChrystal was a prime mover in the enrichment detail of the Military Industrial Complex during the Obama Presidency. As is the norm, his retirement from the military led to a series of appointments in business and heading up various fronts for deep state interests. Corporate boards, consulting, speaking fees: How U.S. generals thrived after Afghanistan is a useful article on Stanley McChrystal exemplifying how ex-generals sell their battlefield experience in other arenas, from corporations to Covid-19 response grifting.

Deep state orbit analyst and writer focused on intelligence and national security including whistleblowers, specifically Wikileaks, Snowden, Assange and Chelsea Manning.

Government: Here is the Pro-NSA Surveillance Argument (10-Jun-2013) theblaze.com article, purged from their website but retained by the Wayback Archive.

• WikiLeaks' Stratfor dump lifts lid on intelligence-industrial complex
• Index of Articles relating to Stratfor - Guardian Newspaper Website 2010-present
• Stratfor Worldview which refers to itself as the world's leading geopolitical intelligence platform
• RANE Corporation - Risk Assistance Network Exchange - parent company of Stratfor - RANE Leadership personae.
• F.B.I. Counterterrorism Agents Monitored Occupy Movement, Records Show (24-Dec-2012) on the New York Times (nytimes.com) website.
• An Educated Guess About How the NSA Is Structured (14-Aug-2013) article by Marc Ambinder and Defense One on The Atlantic (theatlantic.com) website
• Declassified index of UK/USA documents 1940-1956 from the NSA Archive
• GCHQ Tor Stinks Presentation (4-Oct-2013) on The Guardian website
• Obama’s Crackdown on Whistleblowers: The NSA Four (CIA John Kiriakou, NSA Thomas Drake, William Binney, J Kirke Wiebe, Edward Loomis) reveal how a toxic mix of cronyism and fraud blinded the agency before 9/11 (26-Mar-2013) on The Nation (thenation.com) website
• Wikipedia Global Surveillance further reading section of useful references

Guardian UK: The NSA Files index of pages and sub-sections on the Guardian newspaper website relating to Snowden revelations and NSA (US) / GCHQ (UK) signals intelligence. Released and collated around November 2013.

NSA Scandal: Is Palantir Powering the NSA's PRISM? (7-Jun-2013) @ ibtimes.com International Business Times website. Whoever the fuck they are. IBT Media based in NYC, owns Newsweek through a sister company (same shareholders). Dodgy money-laundering and other typical loose money play.

• Spy Files 1: 2011-12-01
• Spy Files 2: 2011-12-08
• Spy Files 3: 2013-09-04
• Spy Files 4: 2014-09-15

British writer George Monbiot (born 27-Jan-1963) known for his environmental and political activism. Contributor to The Guardian on left-environmentalism issues, speaking truth to power, opposing the corporatocracy. See monbiot.com for George Monbiot's personal website with article repository.

American Academic Activist Lawrence Lessig (born 1961-) balances academic insider advantages through tenure at Harvard with support for individual rights, internet freedom and activism against corporate oligarchy capture. Source of Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and Code Is Law - On Liberty in Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig.

Interviewed on 7-Jan-2020, Mikhail Gorbachev saw a threat to the fate of the United States as a state. The riots in Washington last night raised the question of the future fate of the United States as a state, said ex-USSR President Gorbachev. In an interview with Interfax, Gorbachev noted that "the assault on the Capitol was clearly planned in advance, and it is clear by whom... But the unrest is not the main thing. Their task is clear, but only at first glance. Not everything is so simple." In his opinion, the riots that took place in Washington "put into question the future fate of the United States as a state... It will take a little time, and we will figure out why this was really done."

Mikhail Gorbachev: No One Else Can Hide (2-Apr-2020)

The former president of the USSR called for a revision of the world agenda under the influence of the coronavirus pandemic The first and only President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev answered questions from Interfax special correspondent Vyacheslav Terekhov and called for a revision of the world agenda under the influence of the coronavirus pandemic.

- Mikhail Sergeyevich, how did you react to the reports about the pandemic?

I think I took them, like most people. At first, there was hope that it would be possible to bring it under control, to localise it. Everything turned out quite differently. The events took on an all-encompassing character. Unprecedented measures and decisions were required. And leaders, and citizens, and international organizations found themselves in a very difficult situation. All this will need to be sorted out, but now the main thing is to cope with the situation, to defeat the new insidious enemy.

- How do you assess the measures taken?

In the first place should be the issue of safety, saving people's lives. I proceed from the fact that the measures taken are based on scientific data, on the requirements of the most qualified experts. Now they have almost the same opinion - the strictest quarantine is necessary. And this should be taken into account by both the authorities and citizens. A lot depends on the people themselves. The highest responsibility and discipline is needed. Then one can hope that the worst can be avoided.

- Is it time for some conclusions for the future? Do you agree that the world will never be the same again?

It depends on what conclusions will be drawn. In this regard, I return to the history of our fight against the nuclear danger. We realised that this is our common enemy, a common threat. And then the leaders of the two countries, the USSR and the USA, declared that a nuclear war was unacceptable and there could be no winner in it. Reykjavik followed, followed by the first treaties to eliminate nuclear weapons. So far, 85% of those nuclear arsenals have been destroyed. We must continue to follow this path. But we see that new challenges have been added. Together with our comrades-in-arms in the Forum of Nobel Peace Laureates, we have long been calling for a fundamental revision of the foundations of world politics.

Here is one of our appeals, adopted back in 2005: “The basis of security must be priority attention to the urgent needs of people and respect for every human life. Instead of exorbitant military spending, which only undermines security, it is necessary to direct the funds of the international community to solve the problems of education and health, in particular to combat AIDS and tuberculosis through protection and prevention measures. What to add here? Only the name of a new terrible disease.

For the past five years, we have only heard that talk about weapons, missiles, strikes... But is it really not clear that wars and the arms race do not solve the current global problems? War is a defeat, a failure of politics! The common misfortune reminded us: it is pointless to count on the fact that you can hide, sit somewhere, that you can ignore some threats. No one else can hide!

And as long as I have the strength, I will repeat: the demilitarisation of world politics, international relations, and political thinking is necessary. Reallocate budgets - from military purposes to those related to human security. The very concept of security needs to be rethought! Security is, first of all, providing people with food, water, which is no longer enough, a healthy environment and, of course, the unconditional priority of people's health. For the sake of human security, it is necessary to develop a strategy, prepare, plan, and create reserves. Leaders of states, leaders at all levels should bear responsibility for this. I think that we should start preparing an emergency session of the UN General Assembly and hold it as soon as the situation stabilises. It should be about a complete revision of the world agenda.

- May I ask what has changed for you personally and for the Gorbachev Foundation now?

Of course, we comply with everything, we had to switch to remote work. I communicate with colleagues by phone, we have created a platform on the Internet for discussions. Let's get used to the new conditions. I was asked to write an additional chapter for the English edition of my book The Future of the Global World. Of course, given what's going on. I agreed, I will do it.

Russian academic and covert agent Nikolai Bezroukov is based in Germany and, through public facing content, prosecutes excellent anti-Neoliberal (less excellent) pro-Russian affairs. Host of the Soft Panorama website.