La mano dei servizi britannici dietro la visita di Zelensky in Vaticano? Premesso che Zelensky non è cristiano, che l'Ucraina non è un paese cattolico, che il regime ucraino non ha mai mostrato nessun interesse nei confronti di un possibile ruolo di mediazione del Vaticano, che senso ha questa udienza con il Papa? Ha solo un valore mediatico in quanto offre un palcoscenico internazionale a Zelensky, con una platea potenziale di circa un miliardo di cattolici nel mondo. L'incontro tra Zelensky e il Papa è stato fortemente voluto da Paul Gallagher, arcivescovo inglese che dal 2014 è Segretario per i Rapporti con gli Stati presso la Santa Sede. Gallagher un anno fa si era recato in Ucraina e aveva visitato anche Bucha, dando credibilita' alla narrazione del massacro, altra psyop ucro-britannica. Zelensky oltre a incontrare Bergoglio ha avuto anche un incontro privato con Gallagher, che alcuni vaticanisti sospettano da tempo essere parte di una rete di influenza britannica. @LauraRuHK

Did the MI6 facilitate Zelensky's visit to the Vatican? Given that Zelensky is not a Christian, Ukraine is not a Catholic country, and the Ukrainian regime has never shown any genuine interest in the Vatican's mediation role, what was the point of Zelensky's audience with the Pope? It had both a symbolic meaning - a defiant Zelensky showed up at the Vatican wearing a black sweatshirt with a Nazi symbol - and a media impact, it aimed to provide validation for his warmongering rhetoric. The meeting between Zelensky and the Pope was orchestrated by Paul Gallagher, a British archbishop who has been the Holy See's Secretary for Relations with States since 2014. Gallagher had travelled to Ukraine a year ago, visited Bucha, thus lending credibility to the massacre narrative, another Ukro-British psyop. Zelensky after the papal audience had a private meeting with Gallagher, who some Vatican insiders have long suspected of being part of a British influence network. @LauraRuHK

🇹🇭 + 🇺🇸vs🇨🇳 NEW VIDEO: US Proxies Win Thai 2023 General Elections - Thai-Chinese Relations at Risk, Instability Looms…

▪️US interference in Thailand’s media & information space, education system, and political system has reached critical mass, allowing US-sponsored opposition parties to sweep elections;

▪️so-called “pro-democracy” parties are led by corrupt billionaires including a convicted criminal and fugitive behind the worst human rights abuses in Thailand’s history;

▪️the US-backed opposition is openly anti-China, has called for canceling arms deals, infrastructure projects (including the high-speed railway), and rolling back ties with Beijing in favor of pivoting to the West;

▪️the West offers no alternatives to China’s tangible contributions to Thai and regional development as well as economic prosperity. Instead, the US offers increased involvement in regional affairs and “military cooperation” which equates to antagonizing China, the region’s most important economic player;

▪️the US is involved heavily in transforming Asia into a united front against China in the same self-destructive way it has transformed Europe into an anti-Russian block, serving US interests at the expense of the European people’s best interests;

▪️Thailand has suffered cycles of political instability similar to this before and prevailed, and could possibly prevail again. Efforts across multipolar institutions and blocs to aid nations like Thailand in uprooting US interference could help spare Thailand and the region from otherwise inevitable instability and violence;

https://youtu.be/5WJOFH7yNkU

Questa immagine mette i brividi.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230515/pepe-escobar-us-empire-of-debt-headed-for-collapse-1110374196.html

I'm VERY pleased to announce that my Sputnik column is BACK.

That was the top read column on Sputnik International from 2015 to 2017. I had to stop it under pressure by the American bankers controlling Asia Times in Hong Kong in those years.

The star of the show in this inaugural column is the indispensable Michael Hudson.

Do read his book, The Collapse of Antiquity.

Twitter shadow bans look like this. In 14 hours this tweet hasn't received a single like or comment. It was shared once, most likely as a way of flagging it for the shadow ban. I have 5,646 followers on that platform. @LauraRuHK

"Recently, the General Administration of Customs China (GACC) agreed to add the port of Vladivostok in Russia as a transit port for domestic transportation of goods in Jilin Province, which has attracted attention and interpretations from both domestic and international public opinion from different perspectives. This is certainly good news, as it makes contributions to the development of China, Russia, and the East Asian region.

Heilongjiang Province and Jilin Province do not have sea ports and have long relied on the Dalian Port in Liaoning Province for sea transportation of goods. If they transit through the port of Vladivostok in the future, it will shorten the land transportation distance by more than hundreds of kilometers, and the cost will be greatly reduced. For Vladivostok and the wider Far East region of Russia, a deeper and closer connection with the northeastern region of China will undoubtedly bring more development opportunities. These all have strong certainty, and worth expectations by both China and Russia.

However, things are not that simple. According to reports from some media, this means that Russia has reopened Vladivostok to China after 163 years. This naturally evokes historical memories and emotions among many Chinese netizens. Some foreign media outlets have taken the opportunity to claim that "Russia may be becoming a vassal state of China," in an attempt to stir up concerns about China in Russian society and add materials to the special version of "China threat theory" tailored for Russia. This is a deliberate denigration of Russia and a malicious intention to sow discord in the new type of major-country relationship between China and Russia." @LauraRuHK https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202305/1290769.shtml

US consumer debt stands at $17 trillion, credit card defaults at pandemic level

Total household debt in the first quarter of 2023 rose by $148 billion, or 0.9%, to $17.05 trillion, the report said, adding that balances were also $2.9 trillion higher than at the end of 2019, before the pandemic-triggered recession.
"The share of current debt becoming delinquent increased for most debt types," the report said. "The delinquency transition rate for credit cards and auto loans increased by 0.6 and 0.2 percentage points, respectively approaching or surpassing their pre-pandemic levels," the report said.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt_unc2

🇨🇳🇷🇺Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who’s responsible for energy, will lead a business delegation to China next week to attend the Russia-China Business Forum in Shanghai on May 23.
Trade between China and Russia is booming, as their economies are very complementary: China is a manufacturing power but resource poor, so it needs Russian energy, while Russia has enormous energy reserves but needs investment and help broadening its economic base. Basically, a win-win partnership. 🇺🇸🇪🇺The US and EU, on the other hand, are in direct competition for resources and market shares. No wonder they keep pushing the following narrative, a typical case of psychological projection. Vita Spivak, non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment: “In the economic realm, similar to geopolitics, Russia is actively strengthening its dependency on China and is becoming Beijing’s junior partner.” The only junior partner i see here is the EU, though the term "vassal" might be more appropriate to describe its political relationship with the US. @LauraRuHK

🇨🇳🇷🇺Il primo ministro russo Mikhail Mishustin e il vice primo ministro Alexander Novak, responsabile per l'energia, guideranno una delegazione di imprenditori russi che si recherà in Cina la prossima settimana per partecipare al Russia-China Business Forum organizzato a Shanghai il 23 maggio.
I rapporti commerciali tra Cina e Russia sono in piena espansione, poiché le loro economie sono estremamente complementari: la Cina è una potenza manifatturiera ma povera di risorse, quindi ha bisogno dell'energia russa, mentre la Russia ha enormi riserve energetiche ma ha bisogno di investimenti e di aiuto per ampliare la propria base economica. Si tratta di una cooperazione vantaggiosa per entrambi i paesi. 🇺🇸🇪🇺Gli Stati Uniti e l'Unione Europea, invece, sono in diretta competizione sia per le risorse che per le quote di mercato. Non c'è da stupirsi che continuino a spingere la seguente narrazione, in un tipico caso di proiezione psicologica. Vita Spivak, analista presso il Carnegie Endowment scrive: "In ambito economico, analogamente alla geopolitica, la Russia sta attivamente rafforzando la sua dipendenza dalla Cina e sta diventando il partner junior di Pechino". In realtà qui l'unico partner minore è l'UE, anche se il termine "vassallo" potrebbe essere più appropriato per descrivere la sua relazione con gli Stati Uniti. @LauraRuHK

⚡️The European Union designated weapons as "carbon-neutral" to exempt them from a carbon duty.
This decision was made in the interests of the US defense industry. Military-industrial complex products are excluded from the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which sets a fee on CO2 emissions during production. CBAM is one of the elements of the EU Green Deal. CBAM is aimed at equalizing the price of carbon paid for EU products and imported goods. Exceptions were approved by the EU Council on April 25. The carbon footprint from producing an advanced fighter jet is no less than that from manufacturing a passenger airliner but vassals are not supposed to notice and if they do, they pretend they didn't. @LauraRuHK

⚡️L'Unione Europea ha designato le armi come "carbon-neutral" per esentarle da una tassa sul carbonio. Apparentemente missili, caccia bombardieri e carri armati sono green, ma se importate una bicicletta dalla Cina o un sacco di cemento scatta il dazio.

Questa decisione è stata presa nell'interesse del complesso militare-industriale statunitense i cui prodotti sono stati esclusi dal Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), che stabilisce una tassa sulle emissioni di CO2 durante la produzione. Il CBAM è uno degli elementi chiave del Green Deal dell'UE e ha lo scopo di imporre un dazio sull'impronta di carbonio dei beni importati. Le eccezioni sono state approvate dal Consiglio dell'UE il 25 aprile. @LauraRuHK https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-7-2023-INIT/en/pdf

Il Segretario Generale della NATO Stoltenberg ha dichiarato : "Se gli alleati della NATO, soprattutto quelli più importanti, inizieranno a fornire all'Ucraina garanzie di sicurezza bilaterali, saremo vicini a invocare l'articolo 5". Qualcuno ha idea di cosa significhi?. Supponiamo che ci sia un paese della NATO talmente idiota da decidere di fornire "garanzie di sicurezza" al regime criminale di Kiev, cosa succede? Scatta l'articolo 5, la NATO entra direttamente in guerra con la Federazione Russa, invece di continuare a usare gli ucraini come carne da cannone? Beh, ho una vaga idea di come andrebbe a finire e nella mia sfera di cristallo vedo un fungo atomico e mezza Europa ridotta in cenere radioattiva.

L'Ucraina non è un membro della NATO e non lo sarà mai. Quindi, perché mai questa clausola del Trattato Nord Atlantico dovrebbe essere applicata all'Ucraina? @LauraRuHK

NATO'S PR OFFENSIVE https://unherd.com/2023/05/how-nato-seduced-the-european-left/?=frlh

China has called on foreign embassies to remove posters in support of Ukraine, the Japanese Kyodo news agency has reported, citing diplomatic sources.

According to the agency, some diplomatic missions in Beijing put up on their buildings posters with words of support for Ukraine, such as "Stand with Ukraine" in both English and Chinese.

Among the countries whose embassies put up pro-Ukrainian posters, the agency named Canada, Germany and Poland. The notice was allegedly sent to all the diplomatic missions.

@ukraine_watch

L'Ucraina ha bruciato $150 milioni in 2 minuti lanciando 30 missili Patriot dal costo di $5 milioni l'uno. E alla fine la piattaforma di lancio e' stata comunque distrutta dai missili russi. Pubblicita' negativa per il sistema Patriot. Chi mai l'acquisterebbe dopo aver assistito a questo fallimento?