Authored by Alexander Zhang via The Epoch Times,

Bank chiefs have been summoned for a meeting with Treasury ministers to discuss how customers can be protected from “being de-banked” after Nigel Farage accused Coutts of closing his account due to his political views.

The former UK Independence Party leader claimed earlier this month that the prestigious bank he had been with for over 40 years has closed his account with “no explanation.”

Last week, Mr. Farage released dossiers he had acquired from the bank, which indicated that Coutts shut his bank account because it found his public statements did “not align” with its values.

City Minister Andrew Griffith is expected to write to the chief executives of 19 banks, building societies, and digital challengers on Monday, warning that regulations around “politically exposed persons” (PEP) are “being applied in a disproportionate manner by some financial institutions.”

He said the government will “take all action necessary” to protect customers from such practices.

‘Fundamental Right’

Mr. Griffith says in the letter: “You will be aware of recent publicity around allegations of client de-banking in recent weeks and months.

“This has raised significant concern in both Houses of Parliament, including throughout the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, and in recent days.”

The minister said the government is “unequivocal” that banks and other payment service providers “should not be terminating contracts of payment account facilities on grounds relating to users’ exercising of their right to lawful freedom of expression.”

He said the government “strongly supports this fundamental right afforded to all people in British society and will take the action necessary to protect it.”

Mr. Griffith added, “I am calling a roundtable at the earliest opportunity to hear your views on how you and your firms will ensure that customers can access payment accounts without fear of being de-banked for their lawful expression, and necessary actions to be taken to implement the reforms announced.”

The letter is to be sent to NatWest, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, Nationwide Building Society, Santander, Virgin Money, and Co-operative Bank.

Other chief executives expected to receive the invite include those at TSB, Metro, Allied Irish, Danske Bank, and Bank of Ireland, while the heads of digital finance outfits at Monzo, Starling, Chase, PayPal, Revolut, and Wise will also be called to the Treasury.

‘Deeply Inappropriate’

Last week, Mr. Farage released pages of documents in the Daily Mail that he obtained after he made a subject access request to his former bank Coutts.

The document mentioned that he reshared a tweet by the comedian Ricky Gervais mocking transgenderism, which the document called “a transphobic comedy sketch.”

His support for former U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as his views on immigration, net zero, and the COVID-19 vaccine, were also listed as reasons to exit him.

The document said that Mr. Farage is “xenophobic and racist” and that his views “were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation.”

The bank’s behaviour has been condemned by senior Tories, including Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Net Zero Minister Grant Shapps, and former minister David Davis.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak wrote on Twitter: “This is wrong. No one should be barred from using basic services for their political views. Free speech is the cornerstone of our democracy.”

Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest Group, of which Coutts is part of the wealth management division, wrote to Mr. Farage to apologise for “deeply inappropriate comments” made about him in official documents, which she said, “do not reflect the view of the bank.”

“No individual should have to read such comments and I apologise to Mr. Farage for this. I have written to him today to make that apology and reiterate our offer of alternative banking arrangements,” she added.

The digital ruble is a CBDC project the Bank of Russia has been working on since 2020, when the Bank of Russia published its first analytical report on the topic.

Later, the regulator updated the report including the feedback from Russian banks and other financial market participants.

The regulator announced it started piloting the system with a number of Russian banks in February 2022, shortly before the country started a war in Ukraine.

As CoinDesk reports, the project initially was viewed by the Bank of Russia both as a tool against sanctions and a way to control how the government is spending money allocated for social projects.

And now, the wait is over!

The Bank of Russia’s centralized, programmable digital token officially received the State Duma’s blessing on Tuesday.

But, as Riley Waggaman reports via Off-Guardian.org, all is not what it seems with the glad-handing we are seeing

Safe and convenient concepts such as “digital ruble platform”, “digital ruble platform participant”, as well as “digital ruble platform user” and “digital account (wallet)”, now have concrete definitions provided by pages and pages of legal mumbo-jumbo.

The approved legislation designates the Bank of Russia as the sole operator of the digital ruble platform. The Central Bank will be responsible for all aspects of “Russia’s” CBDC, including functionality, safety, and “the correct accounting” of transactions.

Interfax provided some more details about what was included in the final version of the bill:

The adopted law clarifies the ban on crediting digital ruble accounts, as well as on the accrual of interest on the balance of digital rubles. It is also prohibited to open joint digital ruble accounts (for several users).

The document also establishes the Central Bank’s right to block a platform participant (bank) from conducting a transaction if the regulator suspects it is being carried out without the client’s consent. In this case, the Central Bank will inform the bank or the client about the possibility of sending a second order using the same details and for the same amount. Upon receipt of a repeated order, the Central Bank will be obliged to honor it.

In addition, according to the law, the Bank of Russia will be able to enter into agreements with other CBDC operators [i.e., other central banks]—not only of a foreign state, but also of a group of foreign states.

By the way: Interfax’s report also featured an interesting comment from first deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia, Olga Skorobogatova, who is very excited about the possibility of creating not just “national” CBDCs, but CBDCs for “a whole space”. And just think: some gullible worrywarts claim CBDCs could undermine what little remains of national sovereignty.

The main provisions of the law will come into force on August 1, 2023.

The legislation also paves the way for a multi-phase project designed to integrate the digital ruble into Russia’s economy.

RBC explained:

As stated in the materials on the digital ruble on the website of the Bank of Russia, the Central Bank will introduce [the CBDC] in stages: “First, we need to conduct a pilot on real digital rubles with real clients, and work out basic operations with banks (opening and closing digital wallets, transferring digital rubles between citizens, payment for purchases and services using a QR code). In the future, the range of operations will be expanded. […] The decision to scale the digital ruble will be made based on the results of passing all stages of the pilot and taking into account the feedback from its participants.”

A VTB representative told RBC that the testing will take place in “friends and Family” mode—using a small circle of customers and bank employees. Banks will test all the main operations: registering and opening a wallet, replenishing it, withdrawing funds from a digital wallet to a non-cash account, transfers from one client to another, as well as payments and self-executing transactions, according to Alexei Matveev, head of the payment business development department at Alfa Bank.

I won’t waste your time explaining why the digital ruble is no different from the digital euro, or the digital peso, or whatever kind of soul-crushing digital token your own government is currently shilling.

Yes, there have been valiant attempts by the internet’s most revered intellects to portray the digital ruble as a sanctions-busting, sovereignty-protecting, completely voluntary, extremely friendly and benign digital coin.

But unfortunately these Very Serious Pundits are very seriously misinformed.

A closing thought before I leave you.

Guys, this was huge big news – the digital ruble is now official. It now has a formal legal status. It’s happened. It’s here and it’s probably not going away.

For better or worse (probably for worse, but you never know!), the ratification of this law was a historic event.

And where’s the coverage? THIS HAPPENED TWO DAYS AGO.

I checked RT.com, the #1 source for Russia News. Nothing.

(Or maybe I just didn’t see it? Or maybe they are seconds away from filing a report about this momentous event, which occurred almost 48 hours ago?)

Come on, now. People seem to be interested in Russia. There is also much interest in CBDCs. But for some reason, when you put these two things together…crickets.

Authored by Michael Chapman via The Libertarian Institute,

Although the Joe Biden administration and much of the major media contend that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, U.S. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) told Valuetainment Founder Patrick Bet-David that Vladimir Putin has opposed “the movement of NATO to his borders” for “at least 15 years” because he sees such expansion “as a threat.”

Macgregor’s view is shared by the University of Chicago’s Distinguished Service Professor John Mearsheimer, considered one the world’s leading scholars on “realist” foreign policy. He argues that Russia considers NATO expansion into Ukraine as an “existential threat,” a position it has publicly held since at least 2008.

Yet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the conflict “was never about NATO enlargement” or “about some threat to Russia’s security.” Blinken also claims that Russia’s assertion that it was promised NATO would not spread eastward after the collapse of the USSR is false.

So who is telling the truth? Let’s look at the record.

On Bet-David’s June 28 PBD Podcast, Macgregor explained that Putin has “been talking at least for 15 years about his opposition to the movement of NATO to his borders. He’s made it very clear that he regarded it as a threat. One of the reasons he moved into Crimea was that he saw that becoming a NATO naval base principally for the U.S. Navy, obviously in the Black Sea. So, he moved on that first and then said, look, this has got to stop.”

Declassified documents in the National Security Archive at George Washington University show that former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, starting in 1990, was given many assurances by U.S. and European leaders that they would not expand NATO eastward to Russia. “Not one inch eastward,” said then-Secretary of State James Baker.

Ukraine, the cradle of Kievan Rus (Russia), is on Russia’s western border, and western Ukraine borders Poland, Hungary, and Romania.

The archives document that one of the earliest assurances to Gorbachev came from a speech by the German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in January 1990. In a cable to Washington, DC, the U.S. Embassy stated that Genscher made clear that NATO should rule out an “expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e., moving it closer to Soviet borders.”

In a February 10, 1990 meeting between German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Gorbachev, the archive reports that the “West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east.”

The archive further states, “Not once, but three times, [U.S. Secretary] Baker tried out the ‘not one inch eastward’ formula with Gorbachev…He agreed with Gorbachev’s statement in response to the assurances that ‘NATO expansion is unacceptable.’”

Baker also assured Gorbachev that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” [Emphasis added]

After being briefed by Baker, Chancellor Kohl told Gorbachev, “We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity.”

On May 31, 1990, President George H.W. Bush said to Gorbachev, “[W]e have no intention, even in our thoughts, to harm the Soviet Union in any fashion. That is why we are speaking in favor of German unification in NATO…Such a model, in our view, corresponds to the Soviet interests as well.”

In 1991, British Prime Minister John Major assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” As for NATO inclusion of East European countries, Major said, “Nothing of the sort will happen.”

After a meeting in July 1991 with NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner, a Russian memo reads, “Woerner stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 of 16 NATO members support this point of view).”

The archive article concluded, “Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO.”

After Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin became the first president of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Vladimir Putin became president in May 2000, serving until 2008. He then returned to the presidency in 2012.

Professor John Mearsheimer warns Glenn Greenwald that the Ukrainian counteroffensive will result in significant casualties due to the Russian army’s overwhelming artillery advantage, air superiority, and the undermanned and undertrained Ukrainian forces.

Professor Mearsheimer… pic.twitter.com/35dZa45MPQ

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) July 3, 2023

According to Professor Mearsheimer, author of “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” “Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.”

“For Putin, the illegal overthrow [in 2014] of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a ‘coup—was the final straw,” said Mearsheimer. “He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.”

“The United States pushed forward policies towards Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as an existential threat to their country, a point they have made repeatedly for many years,” Mearsheimer said in a June 2022 speech at the European Union Institute. “Specifically, I am talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia’s border.”

“The United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war is likely to drag on for months, if not years,” added Mearsheimer. “The United States and its allies are helping lead Ukraine down the primrose path.”

Mearsheimer made those remarks one year ago. Today, the Ukraine-Russia war is still ongoing and the U.S. has made no serious effort to broker a peace deal.

President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and their cheerleaders in the major media relentlessly deny that potential NATO expansion into Ukraine had anything to do with Russia’s invasion in 2022. Such an assertion, they claim, is Putin propaganda. However, the historical record does not support their story, “not one inch” of it.

Authored by Peter Schweizer via The Gatestone Institute,

Mission creep is a serious problem in the federal government, and the ongoing investigations by House Republicans into “weaponization” of government misdeeds have shown how pervasive and deep the problem can be.

The FBI, Justice Department, CIA and even the Internal Revenue Service all look as we have seen, like tempting operatives for use against political opponents or to run interference for allies. But what about an agency that is supposed to protect us against cyber threats? A new interim report from the House Judiciary Committee highlights politically motivated mission creep where we might least have expected it: The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

CISA, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, was created in 2018 with a simple, non-political mission statement: “To prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the impact of cyberattacks.” As reported here previously, CISA works to prevent state-sanctioned hackers from attacking and compromising America’s digital infrastructure. The agency exists to warn companies and government entities of pending computer vulnerabilities. It also works to stop ransomware attacks on American companies and their computer networks, and to minimize damage from cyber exploits by foreign and domestic sources. In short, CISA’s mission brief was to watch out for attacks on our digital “boxes and wires.”

Instead, as the House Judiciary Committee report documents, CISA “has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries.” The agency, under the administration of President Joe Biden and under the leadership of Jen Easterly, ramped up efforts to flag “misinformation and disinformation” on social media. According to documents the committee obtained only through subpoena, CISA considered the creation of an anti-misinformation “rapid response team” capable of physically deploying across the United States to stamp out what it would decide constituted such “misinformation.” The agency went, for example, from ensuring the digital security of American voting systems to censoring criticism of those systems.

The internal communications of agency staff and members of its outside advisory group show they knew they were on thin legal ground. Members of CISA’s advisory committee agonized that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work, ” the report said.

After the Biden administration was sued in federal court, CISA outsourced its censorship operation to a non-profit group funded by CISA itself. The Judiciary Committee report charges that the outsourcing was an implicit admission that CISA knew that its censorship activities were unconstitutional. CISA, meanwhile, said that it outsourced material to another agency to “avoid the appearance of government propaganda.”

Today, a look at the agency’s website and Twitter accounts shows only its statutory activity – issuing warnings about ransomware attacks and “zero-day” exploits, warning about hardware vulnerabilities, and some educational advice for ordinary Americans on staying safe during their online activities. This is important work, as the US is under constant cyberattack from state-sanctioned, or state-tolerated, hackers operating from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. These hackers extort millions of dollars from companies and institutions through overt attacks that can cripple their networks and computers. Cyber criminals go in hard, looking for cash, while cyber espionage attacks attempt to go in quietly, harvesting secrets without detection. Stopping them at the firewall is a matter of national security.

So, to dilute that mission with a politically motivated dive into censorship is unconscionable and dangerous. The Judiciary Committee is right to pursue this inquiry to prevent CISA from going off the rails again, as their own mission pledges.

There is more to see here, however, and more to root out than just a thwarted attempt by a government bureaucracy to police the political speech of the American people in violation of the First Amendment. It is the use of funded or politically affiliated non-profit groups to do the government’s dirty work for it. Note that when pressed by a pending lawsuit over its actions, CISA offloaded its “election misinformation” activity to a non-profit organization called the Center for Internet Security (CIS). It was this group, CIS, that served as a singular conduit for election officials to report what they alone determined were false or misleading claims about elections to the large social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter, according to the report.

This parallels the behavior of the Justice Department under then Attorney General Eric Holder during the Barack Obama administration. The Government Accountability Institute did research into the DoJ’s pattern of using “consent decrees” to force private companies with threats of anti-discrimination lawsuits to donate funds to one or more designated non-profit organizations on a list helpfully provided by the Justice Department. These groups were largely “social justice warriors” who would then use the money to exert political pressure. This practice was immediately banned by the Trump administration when it took office in 2017, but that ban was quietly reversed by Biden four years later.

CIS enjoyed government funds for its work, much of which is focused on anti-cyberattack activity, as it should be. But its actions in enforcing censorship of “election misinformation” were revealed in the now-famous dump of internal chatter known as “the Twitter files.”

Not only that, but the woman who in October 2020 made the fateful decision for Twitter to censor the New York Post‘s 2020 scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Vijaya Gadde, became a member of CISA’s “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation” subcommittee after the Biden administration took office. Gadde, you may recall, was unceremoniously fired by Elon Musk on his first day of owning Twitter.

Gadde was a member of this subcommittee, known as the “MDM Subcommittee,” which also counted Dr. Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, and Suzanne Spaulding, a former legal adviser for the CIA. According to a report in The Intercept, this committee in 2022 recommended that CISA closely monitor “social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable news, hyper partisan media, talk radio and other online resources.”

The MDM committee’s report urged the agency to take steps to halt the “spread of false and misleading information” and recommended that CISA stay up to date with the ongoing research on “debunking vs. pre-bunking” information that the committee tars as either unknowingly false (misinformation), deliberately planted by hostile foreign actors (disinformation), or what it termed “malinformation,” defined in its report as “information that may be based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

What the Judiciary Committee’s work so far has highlighted is the creation of “feedback loops”: that an agency of the government can create and use advisory boards to go well beyond its statutory mission, giving it cover for exercising power Congress never meant it to have.

How many more federal agencies are doing similar things?

Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the new book, Red Handed: How American Elites are Helping China Win.

By Molly Gamble of Becker Hospital Review

Mark Tykocinski, MD, has resigned from his roles as president of Thomas Jefferson University and interim dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Philadelphia. 

Jefferson CEO Joseph G. Cacchione, MD, wrote in an email to the university community July 20 that Dr. Tykocinski is exiting his leadership roles “to focus on his research,” according to a copy of the message obtained by Becker’s. Dr. Cacchione said Dr. Tykocinski’s cancer immunotherapy research has reached a pivotal stage. He will continue his work as a professor.

Dr. Tykocinski started as president of Thomas Jefferson University July 1, 2022. He previously served as the university’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and as dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Much of his research centers on immunotherapy and gene therapy — he holds a series of patents related to protein and cellular engineering. 

“We appreciate Dr. Tykocinski’s years of transformational service to Jefferson and wish him an abundance of success in his scientific and other endeavors given their importance to humanity,” Dr. Cacchione wrote. 

Board member Susan Aldridge, PhD, is now the interim president of Thomas Jefferson University, and Steven Herrine, MD, vice dean of undergraduate medical education, will serve as interim dean of the medical school. Dr. Cacchione’s email notes that the university’s searches for a provost and medical school dean were nearing completion.

Dr. Tykocinski’s resignation followed controversy this spring when tweets he had “liked” were called into question. Some tweets questioned the validity and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and called gender reassignment surgery “child mutilation.”

Dr. Tykocinski said he used the “like” function on Twitter to bookmark tweets — not endorse them — in an effort to learn more about the subject matter and better understand particular points of view. 

At the time, Dr. Cacchione conveyed disappointment in Dr. Tykocinski’s “careless” use of the social media network to the Jefferson community. “At his level, he is held to a higher standard and should have known better,” Dr. Cacchione wrote in an email to faculty, employees and students.

The personal chef of former president Barack Obama was found dead in a “paddleboarding accident” near the family’s $12 million mansion on Martha’s Vineyard (which is situated at sea level, a paradox for fervent believers in the melting iceberg theory).

Massachusetts State Police confirmed that the paddleboarder whose body was recovered from Edgartown Great Pond on Monday was Tafari Campbell, 45, of Dumfries, Virginia.

According to the AP, Campbell was employed by the Obamas and was visiting Martha’s Vineyard. The Obamas were not present at the home at the time of the accident. In a statement, the former president and his wife, Michelle Obama, called Campbell a “beloved part of our family.”

“When we first met him, he was a talented sous chef at the White House – creative and passionate about food, and its ability to bring people together,” the couple said. “In the years that followed, we got to know him as a warm, fun, extraordinarily kind person who made all of our lives a little brighter.”

“That’s why, when we were getting ready to leave the White House, we asked Tafari to stay with us, and he generously agreed. He’s been part of our lives ever since, and our hearts are broken that he’s gone.”

Campbell had worked in the White House during Obama’s eight years in Washington. During that time he helped create some of the most famous presidential recipes, included a beer brewed from ingredients grown at the White House.

On Sunday, Campbell went missing in the waters of Edgartown Great Pond on Martha’s Vineyard. When it was time for the first family to depart Washington, they asked Mr Campbell to join them and he “generously agreed” the Obamas’ statement added.

“He’s been part of our lives ever since, and our hearts are broken that he’s gone. Today we join everyone who knew and loved Tafari – especially his wife Sherise and their twin boys, Xavier and Savin – in grieving the loss of a truly wonderful man.”

The search was launched on Sunday night for “a male paddleboarder who had gone into the water, appeared to briefly struggle to stay on the surface, and then submerged and did not resurface,” according to a police report.

“Another paddleboarder was on the pond with him at the time and observed him go under the water,” it added; it wasn’t clear why the other paddleboarder did not intervene and rescue Obama’s cook.

On Monday, his body was found “approximately 100 feet (30 meters) from shore at a depth of about eight feet”.

It remains unclear how a healthy 45-year old male, who is reportedly a good swimmer, can drown in what is literally an 8 feet deep pond.

The Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit is investigating his death, but it is believed to have been an accident, CBS News reported.

The Obamas said Campbell is survived by his wife and their twin boys.

The CIA and allied intelligence services are expanding efforts to recruit “insider” and high-level Russians to spy for the West, following last month’s short-lived mutiny by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, which was widely perceived as a serious challenge to Putin’s grip on power. 

The CIA director himself has called the Wagner rebellion an “opportunity” to continue to exploit cracks in the Russian system, also amid continued domestic uncertainty for the future amid the Ukraine war. Director William Burns in remarks to the Aspen Security Forum late last week bluntly told the audience that the US intelligence community sees a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to exploit influential levels of Russian society and government. He had said something similar earlier in the summer.

He openly called for recruits from among Russia’s elite while saying, “I think Putin is already a little bit uneasy as he looks over his shoulder.”

The comments also came as Putin cracks down on ‘angry patriots’, or pro-war hardliners who think Putin has been too hesitant in executing the war effort. One prominent blogger and ex-security official, Igor Girkin, who led Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in 2014, has recently been arrested on “extremism” charges.

The CIA’s Burns continued in his remarks from last week: “What it resurrected was some deeper questions … about Putin’s judgment, about his relative detachment from events and even about his indecisiveness.”

“I think in many ways it exposed some of the significant weaknesses in a system that Putin has built,” he said further.

Also last week during a speech in Prague, MI6 Chief Richard Moore had a similar assessment, saying “our door is always open” for Russian officials who are fed up with the war.

“There are many Russians today who are silently appalled by the sight of their armed forces pulverizing Ukrainian cities, expelling innocent families from their homes, and kidnapping thousands of children,” Moore said last Wednesday. 

“I invite them to do what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us. Our door is always open,” he said.

Meanwhile, there are fresh figures out this week on Russia’s continuing war-driven capital flight:

A record $253 billion has been pulled out of Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian Central Bank has said.

The net capital outflow from Russia starting February 2022 and ending June 2023 was calculated by the Bank’s Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecasting.

“Net inflows on current transaction accounts [of $236 billion] and net outflows on financial accounts have reached unprecedented levels,” the Bank’s experts said in their analysis published Monday.

The flight of $239 billion from Russia last year, including $13 billion in the pre-invasion month of January, was four times the amount that was pulled out of the country in 2021, according to the analysis.

Burns additionally commented on the West’s support to Ukraine as sending a “message” to Beijing related to threats against Taiwan…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reinforced China’s doubts regarding a potential incursion into Taiwan, said CIA Director, William Burns pic.twitter.com/Mq6I1UvGeU

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 21, 2023

As for Wagner, it’s been widely acknowledged that Prigozhin fundamentally sought a coup within the defense ministry. While he did issue rare criticism directly at Putin amid the events of June 23-24, he later explained he wasn’t trying to overthrow the government. He has lately been seen at Wagner camps inside Belarus, but also appears to be moving freely in and out of Russia via his private plane as well.

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

House Republican leaders have raised the prospect that a Border Patrol chief was the target of retaliation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief after the Border Patrol official sat for a transcribed interview with Congress.

Gregory K. Bovino, the chief patrol agent of the El Centro Border Patrol sector in California’s imperial valley, offered a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee on July 12, 2023. According to Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), within hours of finishing his testimony, Mr. Bovino was informed that he had been relieved of his command at the El Centro sector and “reassigned to a vague, indefinite, and temporary headquarters assignment.”

The timing of Mr. Bovino’s reassignment raised suspicions for Mr. Comer and Mr. Green that the CBP had reassigned the Border Patrol official in retaliation for his testimony.

In a letter to acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller, the two lawmakers shared allegations from a whistleblower that Mr. Bovino’s new assignment is “one of no certain mission, no articulable purpose, and without any timeline of completion.”

“The whistleblower further alleges that this practice is consistent with the way in which CBP officials have dealt with employees who they wish to leave the agency, by placing maximum pressure on them to relocate, retire, or resign,” the Republican lawmakers added.

Citing further whistleblower allegations, Mr. Comer and Mr. Green raised allegations “that Chief Bovino may have produced written testimony in preparation for this hearing that was dissatisfactory to CBP officials: so much so that he was verbally reprimanded by headquarters officials.”

The Republican lawmakers called on the acting CBP commissioner to provide answers about the reassignment. The lawmakers specifically asked for all CBP documents and communications relating to Mr. Bovino’s employment. They also asked for records of any discussions between CBP and Department of Homeland Security or White House officials pertaining to Mr. Bovino’s past congressional testimony or appearances as a witness for transcribed interviews.

The lawmakers further called upon Mr. Miller to be ready to brief House committee staff on this issue by July 28 at the latest.

NTD News reached out to CBP for comment but the agency did not respond by the time this article was published.

According to a CBP statement obtained by The Washington Times, Mr. Bovino was previously reassigned to a headquarters position in 2021, and his subordinates ‘did an excellent job’ handling the El Centro border sector while he was gone. The CBP also claimed it’s dealing with a broader reorganization effort after the overall U.S. Border Patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, retired in June.

Border Patrol Chiefs Previously Blocked From Speaking to Congress

Mr. Bovino was one of several Border Patrol sector chiefs who were invited to testify at a House Oversight Committee hearing earlier this year, but Mr. Comer accused Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of blocking some of the Border Patrol officials from doing so. Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez and Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin did testify, but Mr. Bovino and others did not appear for the hearing.

“It is unfortunate that you are trying to prevent the American people from hearing candid and truthful testimony of U.S. Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agents,” Mr. Comer wrote in a Jan. 27 letter (pdf) to Mr. Mayorkas. “This is necessary oversight, which you and your Department are attempting to block.”

After Mr. Bovino and other Border Patrol officials were blocked from attending the Feb. 7 hearing, Mr. Comer sent a letter (pdf) to Mr. Miller, requesting that he help facilitate interview times for Mr. Bovino and the other Border Patrol officials. Mr. Bovino’s July 12 transcribed interview was the culmination of this earlier effort to get him to talk to members of Congress.

Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

Aren’t you tired hearing about masks? Mask-talk is almost as ubiquitous as Hitler-talk. Well, if the shoe fits…Just because we are tired hearing about appropriate things to discuss, does not mean they should not be discussed. At least that is how I see it. Obviously.

Mask-talk may be annoyingly worn thin, but seeing a mask on the street still makes my blood boil—even more so than it used to. It has become a symbol of ignorance to me if seen in places that don’t require it, and a symbol of compliance and apathy when in places that do require it, such as medical facilities here in Canada. But as shameful as it is to admit, I am guilty of throwing the damn thing on when visiting my urologist, after being told I would have to leave if I didn’t.

Can you believe that? Me? Complying?

There are two types of “non-compliers,” one complies from a place of ignorance, a place of succumbing to authority because that is the “right thing to do.” The other complies when they know the truth but comply because it is just too much trouble not to, doesn’t want to make a scene, and knows at this point that one person standing up and facing the consequences isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans. In other words, being a coward.

Heard that one before, eh? One might ask, “which is worse?”

The second reason to comply is still no good reason, and I come to you here fully exposed and deeply ashamed. But…I wore a FAKE MASK. Even though that makes no public statement, it does make me feel mischievously satisfied. Mind you, I do not wear masks anywhere else, public or private—only in medical facilities (albeit fake, but not even that anymore).

I make this distinction because, in the context of this article, it is an important one to make. I think the person who wears the mask for the second reason stated above, is not stabbing humanity in the eye with an ice pick. There will come a time when those reasons will no longer fly, and wearing a mask, even when required, will be a powerful betrayal to be avoided. I do not believe we are at that point now.

Some may disagree with this reasoning, but the mask isn’t the problem, it is the reason we wear them that is. There is also a tiny bit of rationale in wearing masks in a medical facility. A tiny bit.

I do not think we will win this war allowing ourselves to be mowed down with a machine gun when we refuse to wear a mask. If we can get away with persecution and punishment by pretending to follow the rules, then so be it. Revolutionaries have done this in the early days of a revolution for centuries. There are more effective ways to fight these injustices then getting kicked out of a doctor’s office because you refuse to wear a mask.

I can clearly see the other side of this argument. I would stand up and applaud anyone who refuses to comply and is then humiliatingly banished from the premises. More power to them; such a person is a hero. But I also at the same time applaud the person who is fighting this fight in other ways and chooses to “pretend” to follow the rules in order to get medical care if it is needed (ala a fake mask!). But, for me personally, I am on the fence. And I may slip down to the other side of it soon enough and make a spectacle of myself in the near future by telling the receptionist at the hospital they can take their mask and shove it.

I sat down in the waiting room at my urologist’s office with my fake mask on and feeling rather smug, “I showed them,” I said to myself. Yeah, sure, whatever. My urologist is pretty cool—young, ambitious, a good surgeon (at least he appeared that way to me when he cut out a sizable stone from my kidney a few years ago). I fancy myself a decent judge of character and summed him up as one who would think all this mask crap was a farce. I was mask-less when he came into the little exam room; it was just the two of us. He had a mask on.

“You can take that off,” I said, “don’t keep it on because of me.” He sat down and made no movement to remove it.

“You don’t really think that does any good, do you?” I said after an awkward pause. He then launched into the speech the sheep-folks give when dealing with a client or patient who indicates they believe in all that conspiracy hoopla out there. He wanted to remain kind of neutral, which was not a success. It was obvious.

I shut up. But left the fake mask in my hand, off of my face. I was devastated. “Of all people,” I thought. This is very sad.

I had no way to know if he was just toeing the company line or sincerely believed in his rant. These doctors have been threatened beyond comprehension to walk the straight and narrow, and probably don’t think the mask thing is really a hill to die on. I guess I am one of them myself. At this point it really does not feel like the hill to die on—but am I wrong? I think about all the rebels and dissidents during soviet times. They did not walk around with a sign on them saying “F—k Lenin.” They knew their protest would be lost. “Live to fight another day.”

I left the doctor’s office pretty depressed. I put the fake mask away and checked out, and then walked out, barefaced. The fact I was deceiving everyone with a fake mask no longer appealed to me. I no longer felt excused being an undercover agent for the cause, worried I would lose my cover if I stood on a chair and lit my mask on fire screaming, “viva la revolución!” I was a spy after all, best to lay low. That attitude lost a bit of its appeal.

Doctors don’t seem to have a problem following the rules in order to stay in practice. Most of them don’t even think about it. The orders come down from above and they acquiesce. I wouldn’t be surprised if the CDC, FDA, AMA or whoever else in authority, told doctors to administer gasoline through an IV to cure some new (fake) disease afflicting the masses, most of the “soldiers of medicine” would comply.

Maybe I am being too harsh here. And maybe they comply with something like mask wearing because they see no harm in it, and if it is required for them to keep their license (the license that allows them to help people, which is the real concern in their mind) they are perfectly willing to do it. To be honest, wearing a mask in a medical facility with a ton of sick people milling about (with pathogens that a mask could block) may not be such a stupid idea.

But when does this sort of compliance based on these sorts of reasons, start to backfire on us? Maybe we truly are at a point here where the sacrifice of not getting into to see the doctor becomes necessary to preserve humanity?

Yes, it is that big of a problem now. Being forced to wear a mask has nothing to do with preventing disease, whether people think it does or not, it doesn’t. It has everything to do with marking those who are willing, happily, to comply with arbitrary authority. The mask is a symbol of humility and degradation. It is a submissive gesture, just as shackles are on a slave, or the Star of David is, if it is sewn onto the coat of a Jew.

Complying with mask wearing, if you are doing so because you are afraid of a ghost virus, or of authority that will punish you if you don’t wear one, is being compliant to a lie. That is why it is not a choice. People believe they are wearing masks because it is their right to choose to wear one. But their decision to wear one as their choice, is based on a lie. Any decision based on a lie is false, it is wrong, and it is a nail in the coffin of humanity.

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

Senate Democrats are attempting to sneak an authorization of an outdated gun control law into the “must pass” National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the US Military budget. 

The law in question is the 1988 Undetectable Firearms Act, which was championed by groups like Handgun Control Inc, now known as the Brady Campaign. The Act set the stage for the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.  

Gun Owners of America is working in Congress today to ensure that history does not repeat itself with either of these attacks on your rights.  

The Act itself bans any firearm that cannot be detected by metal detectors. But back in the 1980s, when this bill was written, detection technology was in its infancy. Nowadays, we have sophisticated detection technology that doesn’t rely on metal detection to find firearms. In fact, modern detection technology can spot all objects, including guns regardless of the materials of their construction. 

The Act itself not only hinders innovation in the firearms industry, but the potential for the weaponization of this law is huge, similar to how the 1934 NFA was weaponized to attack pistol braces and expand ATF’s illegal registry. 

A weaponized ATF might do this using the “Major Components” section of the Undetectable Firearms Act. To state it simply, the section makes clear that all guns and the major parts need to be recognizable by an x-ray machine. Who knows what they could twist into new law via “Regulatory Authority,” or how this could affect newer technologies, like 3D printed firearms, which have been a target of the anti-gun machine since their inception with the Defense Distributed Liberator. 

Anti-Gun politicians like Chuck Schumer knew that they wouldn’t be able to reauthorize this contentious piece of unconstitutional legislation through traditional means, so this reauthorization was added to the NDAA via a process called a substitute amendment. 

These substitute amendments are typically used for fixing grammar or spellchecking bills, but it’s also a way to get law into the final bill text without having it be voted on.  

Requiring firearms to meet archaic standards of metal detection technology from the 1980s is pure feel-good security theater. Reauthorizing the Undetectable Firearms Act will not keep anyone safe from criminals or terrorists intent on doing harm.  

Only law-abiding gun owners and hobbyists will obey this weak, ineffective, and outdated law. On the other hand, if Congress wants to help bolster security at a sensitive location, it ought to invest in and prioritize modern detection technology. 

So, you’re probably asking: “What can we do to stop this from becoming law?” 

Well, the answer lies in the lawmaking process. Both the Senate and the House have their own versions of the NDAA. Because the Senate version has this awful poison pill, but the House version doesn’t, we can stop this by demanding its removal. 

This is where we need your help. Please, call your Senators and Representatives and tell them to remove the “Permanent Authorization of Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988” from the NDAA immediately! 

*   *   * 

We’ll hold the line for you in Washington. We are No Compromise. Join the Fight Now.