The US House of Representatives passed legislation on Saturday to transfer frozen Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine and ban TikTok unless it severs ties to its Chinese parent company. | House lawmakers passed the bill, dubbed the 21st Century Peace through Strength Act, in a vote of 360 in favor and 58 opposed. ● The legislation allows the executive branch to transfer frozen Russian sovereign assets to Ukraine, sanctions Iran, disrupts the ability of Palestinian organization Hamas to fund terrorism and sanctions entities involved in international fentanyl trafficking.

💬 Christine Lagarde says US plan to raise debt against Russian assets carries legal risk (Financial Times) | “Moving from freezing the assets, to confiscating them, to disposing of them is something that needs to be looked at very carefully,” Lagarde said, warning it could entail “breaking the international order that you want to protect; that you would want Russia to respect”. ■ Legal risks loom over proposal to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, warns ECB chief (Yahoo)

■ IMF warns about confiscating Russian assets (RT.com)
■ US House approves 89 billion euros aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan (EuroNews)
■ US House advances $95 billion Ukraine-Israel package toward Saturday vote (Euractiv)

Iranian media reported Saturday that 64 tons of veterinary medicines have been exported to Afghanistan from Taibad in Razavi Khorasan province, citing the local veterinary network chief, Hassan Azarian. | Azarian highlighted the effectiveness of Iranian animal medicines as a key factor driving the increase in exports. ● Additionally, the IRIB news agency reported that last year, 885 tons of aquaculture supplements were shipped from the Dogharoon border to Afghanistan.

Nation of Islam–Research Group | The Money Behind Genocide | And as the world is watching a genocide for the first time captured in real time, people may not be aware that they are not watching a religious conflict at all. Rather, they are witnessing an economically motivated depopulation movement to gain control of yet more oil and gas reserves. [...] But today’s covetous King Benjamin has another goal. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan pointed out in his monumental address on February 25th in Detroit that “Israel sees billions of dollars of oil wealth under Gaza and wants to build a canal larger than the Suez Canal and take advantage of that wealth.”

American plans would violate international law, Moscow has said | Moscow does not recognize Washington’s attempt to illegally claim over a million square kilometers of maritime territory, including in the Arctic and the Bering Sea, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said. ● Russian representatives informed the Council of the International Seabed Authority of this on Monday. The council is currently meeting in Kingston, Jamaica and operates under the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). ● The US is “unilaterally trying to reduce the area of ​​the seabed under the Authority, and hence the entire international community,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. ● The US Department of State announced its “extended continental shelf” project in December 2023, claiming jurisdiction of approximately one million square kilometers beyond its territorial waters. The UNCLOS allows maritime claims of up to 200 nautical miles (370 km) from the shore in the world’s oceans.

Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said it is the sovereign decision of Pakistani government to move forward on Pakistan and Iran gas pipeline project. | She expressed these words while responding to the queries of the media persons regarding yesterday’s US congressional hearing, at her weekly news briefing in Islamabad today. She made it clear that at this point, there is no room for any discussion or waiver from any third party for the construction of the pipeline inside Pakistan’s territory. She said Pakistan has also conveyed to the US authorities the importance of this project for its energy security.

The European Union announced a 7.4 billion euro ($8.1 billion) funding package and an upgraded relationship with Egypt on Sunday. | The agreement lifts the EU's relationship with Egypt to a "strategic partnership" and was unveiled as a delegation of leaders visited Cairo. It is designed to boost cooperation in areas including renewable energy, trade and security, while delivering grants, loans and other funding over the next three years to support Egypt's faltering economy. ● The proposed funding includes 5 billion euros in concessional loans and 1.8 billion euros of investments, according to a summary published by the EU. Another 600 million euros would be provided in grants, including 200 million euros for managing migration. ● Such deals were "the best way to address migratory flows", said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who travelled to Cairo alongside EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the Greek, Austrian and Belgian prime ministers, and the Cypriot president.

■ Any forced displacement of Palestinians into Egypt ‘unacceptable,’ Greek premier says (Anadolu)

Outdated information, tenuous links sealed this vessel’s fate | When the 19,000 gross ton bulk carrier MV Rubymar entered the Red Sea just a few weeks ago, the captain knew that the area was dangerous, but he also knew that the Houthi rebels were targeting UK and US owned ships. His vessel was Belize flagged, and Lebanese owned. His assessment was that the risks offered by the Houthis were worth avoiding the 3,000-6,000 mile detour offered by a trip around the Cape of Good Hope. ● On February 18, two Houthi missiles hit the ship, forcing the entire crew to abandon the terminally stricken vessel. What the captain didn’t realize was that the ship had two British indicators linked to it - it was insured by Thomas Miller Specialty, a commercial managing general agency (MGA) which manages a GWP of over $1.6 billion writing a variety of niche and specialist lines of business, and that the ship’s Lebanese operator was inaccurately connected to a UK residential address in the Equasis public database. The Department for Transport criticized the attack, acknowledging Rubymar’s minimal connections to the UK.

A number of countries have been jostling to return humans to the Moon, with Moscow and Beijing teaming up in 2022 to sign a memorandum of understanding on joint exploration of the celestial body. The sides also pledged to work together to build a base there by the 2030s. | Russia and China are mulling jointly building a lunar nuclear power plant, Yuri Borisov, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, said on Tuesday. [...] Harnessing the power of “nuclear space energy” could allow lunar settlements to be built, as solar panels would not be able to provide enough electricity to power such bases, he pointed out. [...] According to the Russian Federal Space Agency head, the technology required for the construction of such a lunar nuclear power plant is almost ready. Furthermore, Borisov weighed in on Russia’s plans to build a nuclear-powered cargo spaceship called Zevs (Zeus).

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has approved a ban on gasoline exports for six months starting from March 1, the RBC daily reported on Tuesday, citing two sources. | The temporary export ban does not apply to the agreed volumes of supplies to the Eurasian Economic Union countries, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, RBC said. Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak earlier addressed the prime minister with a proposal to introduce the temporary ban. In a letter dated Feb. 21, Novak noted that seasonal demand for the fuel will soon pick up in the domestic market.

■ Russia to BAN Gasoline Exports for 6 Months (Hal Turner) [...] Yet no one is blind to the fact that such an export ban will severely harm Western countries who are presently supporting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Russia can increase and decrease oil, gasoline, and Diesel fuel production at will because they have so much of it. Europe was still getting gasoline, albeit thru secondary sources. Now, they get nothing. Nothing.

John Miles | NATO has always allowed the United States to control Europe’s military policy. Now it’s dictating its energy policy, too. | [...] Investigative journalist Dan Lazare joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program on Wednesday to comment on the US ally’s report.

💬 “It's just absolutely farcical,” said the iconoclastic author. “I don't know how much longer this can go on. I mean, Denmark investigated, came up with a conclusion, and everybody knows it was obviously sabotage – that was obvious from the very start. And [Denmark] refrains from pointing a finger at a likely culprit.” ● “And the reason, of course, is the likeliest culprit – in fact, I'm 100% convinced that it is the culprit – is the United States,” he claimed. “But, Denmark, Sweden, everybody is afraid to say it. It's extraordinary.”

Sweden, likewise a US ally, ended its own investigation into the Nord Stream disaster earlier this month, also without commenting on the culprit of the sabotage. Lazare said the United States’ guilt is obvious, but frequently ignored in order to safeguard relations between the US and Europe. That dynamic is playing to the benefit of far-right parties across the continent who are the only ones willing to openly acknowledge the US role in the act, according to Lazare.

■ Sweden ends Nord Stream sabotage probe, hands evidence to Germany (aNews)[February 07,2024]
■ Seymour Hersh: A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM (09/27/23)
■ Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can't Name the Culprit (09/26/23)

The country is the second U.S. ally in the past month to end an investigation into the pipeline explosions. | Denmark became the latest country to close its investigation into the underwater explosions that caused leaks in two pipelines that were built to carry gas from Russia to Germany, with authorities saying they had found that "there was deliberate sabotage" of the infrastructure but would not go further in their probe to confirm who was behind the blasts. [...] Since the gas leaks were discovered in September 2022, seven months after Russia invaded Ukraine, various observers have accused the two countries as well as the United States of being at fault. ● The leaks—which experts said led to the single largest release of methane gas due to human activity—were discovered beneath the Baltic Sea, off the coast of the Danish island of Bornholm. Seismic institutes found that two explosions had occurred underwater just before the leaks were recorded.

■ Sweden ends Nord Stream sabotage probe, hands evidence to Germany (aNews)[February 07,2024]
■ Seymour Hersh: A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM (09/27/23)
■ Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can't Name the Culprit (09/26/23)

EU Urges Continued Gas Conservation Amidst Energy Crisis | In a bid to navigate the ongoing energy crisis exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the European Commission has recommended that member states persist in their efforts to conserve gas supplies. The recommendation, awaiting approval by the Council of the EU, advises nations to uphold voluntary measures aimed at achieving a collective reduction in gas demand by 15 percent compared to the average demand recorded between April 2017 and March 2022.

ChEMK, Kuznetsk Ferroalloys, and the Serov Ferroalloy Plant have all been transferred back to state ownership as the court ruled on the illegality of their privatization in the post-Soviet Union era. | Russian police in Chelyabinsk Region arrested Yury Antipov, who was listed in Forbes's latest Russian billionaires list, yesterday after a regional court seized three of his companies due to claimed irregularities with their privatization in the 1990s. ● The local outlet 74.ru announced the arrest, citing a source in one of his companies, the Chelyabinsk electro-metallurgy combine (ChEMK), but Antipov's charges are still ambiguous. ● Earlier in the day, a court in Sverdlovsk Region ruled that Antipov's companies were illegally privatized after the dismantling of the Soviet Union and issued an order for the transfer of his companies, ChEMK, Kuznetsk Ferroalloys, and the Serov Ferroalloy Plant back to state ownership.

■ Russia Implements Six-Month Ban on Gasoline Exports (novinite.com)

The Israeli occupation is once again caught red-handed after it is shown that it was lying about its land bridge aimed at averting the Yemeni blockade on the Red Sea. | Israeli shipping and supply lines have been of utmost importance for the Resistance in Gaza, as its ports in Asdod and Askalan, key hubs for oil and armament imports, were struck as soon as the Israeli occupation started to bomb Gaza, forcing it to resort to the port of "Eilat", its southernmost settlement. ● However, Yemen was not about to laisser vivre a colonialist entity massacring civilians in Gaza, as it imposed a blockade in the Red Sea, which meant the occupation could no longer receive shipments from the south; this was also accompanied by Yemeni strikes on the "Eilat" port, which to say added insult to injury would be an understatement. [...] An investigation by Mondoweiss found that just like "Israel" itself, the land bridge may be a sham in and of itself used by the occupying entity to assure their investors that it was all okay and that the economy was not completely crumbling.

■ Most UK exporters hit by Red Sea crisis – survey (RT.com)

Theodore Robert Beale | The combination of financially backing the EU, supporting NATO’s Russian sanctions, the primitive Green agenda, and the importation of millions of economically net-negative immigrants has finally overwhelmed what was once one of the world’s great economic engines | The biggest lie that the neoliberal economists ever told was that immigration is good for the economy. While immigration can be good for the economy, such as when you’re replacing Native American nomads, African slaves, and Irish indentured servants with hard-working German immigrants, the 20th century movement of peoples has proven, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that replacing Northern Europeans with any other population is very, very bad for the economy in every sense of the term, including by the most basic GDP-per-capita metric. ● To say that “immigration is good for GDP” is a literal tautology, because GDP increases with the addition of every single economic actor. Of course, it does with every dollar of debt too, and yet no one is dumb enough – a few professional neo-Keynesians aside – to claim that “debt is good for the economy”. But in both cases, the historical data proves – does not suggest, proves – that mass immigration is reliably very, very bad for an industrial economy.

■ Electricity, Heating, Fuel Costs in Germany Jump 41% in 3 Years - Reports (Sputnik News)

Catherine Austin Fitts | The U.S. Federal Reserve and its central banking allies are engineering unprecedented changes in the financial system. How do we know this? Because they speak openly about what they intend to do. | I want to show you three 1-minute videos today that describe the vision of total central control currently being implemented by the central banks. ● The first is a clip from an IMF panel in October 2020. The speaker is Agustín Carstens, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland. The BIS is the central bank of central banks, which enjoys the powers of sovereign immunity. The Federal Reserve is one of 63 central banks which are BIS members, including the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of China. In this clip, Mr. Carstens is describing the nature of central bank digital currency or CBDC. The BIS is leading a global effort to implement CBDC, including a partnership with the Federal Reserve. Let’s see what Mr. Carstens says about where he hopes our money is going.

Germany's policies implemented in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict escalation in February 2022 translated into serious losses for the German economy. | Under the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his government, Germany did its best to sever itself from cheap Russian energy and to cut all economic ties with Russia regardless of how beneficial they were to the German economy. ● The shutdown of the last three German nuclear power plants in 2023 was unsurprisingly followed by it ceasing to be a power exporter and becoming a power importer instead, even as Scholz boasted that his country is done with nuclear power generation. [...] In the meantime, it appears that Germany is importing as much gas from Russia as it was before February 2022, albeit in a much more costly way, said Dr Gunnar Beck, member of the European Parliament for the rightwing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

💬 “The difference is that Europe is now importing Russian gas via third countries to disguise the origin of the gas. So they can pretend that they've reduced gas supplies from Russia, and they are honoring the sanctions, but they just continue as they did before by importing that same gas through third countries. And it's been officially declared to be gas from other sources,” he explained.

Israel's economy shrank by far more than expected in the final quarter of last year in the wake of the war on the besieged Gaza Strip, marking sharpest contraction since the pandemic. | Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said in a statement that economy plunged 19.4% in the final three months of 2023, as significant resources were diverted to the regime’s military engagement in the war on the coastal sliver. That is the equivalent of a fall of 5% between October and December. ● According to British daily business newspaper the Financial Times, the significant downturn in Israel’s economy was partially due to mobilizing 300,000 reservists, who abandoned their jobs and businesses for extended presence in the military. ● Other factors involved the Tel Aviv regime’s funding housing for over 120,000 settlers, who left the northern and southern regions of the 1948-occupied territories close to the border with the Gaza Strip.

Preliminary figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed that the British economy has officially entered a recession in the latter half of 2023. The grim data indicates a contraction in GDP for two consecutive quarters, marking what economists term as a "technical recession." | According to the ONS, Britain's GDP experienced a decline of 0.3 percent in the final quarter of 2023, following a 0.1 percent contraction in the preceding July-September period. These consecutive quarterly declines have sounded alarm bells, signaling the onset of economic recessionary conditions. ● The downturn was widespread across key sectors of the economy, with industrial production plummeting by 1% in the fourth quarter, construction contracting by 1.3%, and the services sector, a traditional engine of economic growth, witnessing a 0.2 percent decline. Notably, the decline in the services sector was primarily driven by a notable drop in wholesale and retail trade, which contracted by 0.6 percent.

The Institut International d’Etudes Bancaires was set up in the aftermath of World War II to foster closer ties among financial institutions | For more than seven decades, a secretive and highly influential organization has been bringing together the heads of Europe’s largest banks twice a year at luxury hotels and royal palaces across the continent to discuss global policymaking among other issues, according to a report by the Financial Times on Monday. The article highlighted that the existence of the Institut International d’Etudes Bancaires (IIEB) is barely known outside its membership while the group has no website and its meeting agendas are not made public. Members are reportedly discouraged from sharing details of the discussions.

■ Inside Europe’s most secretive gilded banking society (Financial Review)

The American fear was that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz might let the Russian gas flow, easing German economic worries, he wrote | Germany has been in economic and political turmoil since the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines were blown up, US investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh opined in his blog on Substack. 💬 "The American fear was that [German] Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz [...] might [...] let the [Russian] gas flow, easing German economic worries and reinstating an important energy force for German industry [following the sabotage on the Nord Streams]. That would not be allowed to happen, and Germany has been in economic and political turmoil since," he wrote. ● On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported "unprecedented damage" on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian prosecutor general’s office opened a case on charges of international terrorism. ● On February 8, 2023, Hersh wrote that, in June 2022, with assistance from Norwegian experts, the Navy divers planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines. Later, The New York Times reported, citing US officials, that the sabotage on the gas pipelines could have been carried out by a certain "pro-Ukrainian group" that acted without the knowledge of the US authorities.

■ Seymour Hersh: A YEAR OF LYING ABOUT NORD STREAM (09/27/23)
■ Nord Stream Blast: Why the West Still Can't Name the Culprit (09/26/23)

The rising cost of living is taking a toll on countless people across Europe.

Under the threat of eviction in Spain, 84-year-old Antonio emerges from his quiet retirement to fight for housing rights in the country. Watch the full film by @RodrigoHdzT and @Adriana__CN:… pic.twitter.com/1mNRqj4t52

— Witness Docs (@AJWitness) January 22, 2024

Naval forces of the Houthi movement in Yemen attacked a British oil ship in the Gulf of Aden on Friday, and the vessel caught fire after it was hit by a missile, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said. 💬 "Yemeni naval forces carried out a targeting operation on the British oil ship (MARLIN LUANDA) In the Gulf of Aden, using a number of appropriate naval missiles, the strike was direct, and resulted the burning of the vessel," the spokesman wrote on his Telegram channel. The tanker Marlin Luanda operated by the freight company Trafigura from Denmark has deployed firefighting equipment to suppress a fire reportedly caused by a Houthi missile when the ship was crossing the Gulf of Aden, the company said in a statement to Sputnik.

■ CREW ABANDONS SHIP -- SINKING . . .REPORTS: British Oil Tanker Hit By Yemen; "Massive Fire, Sinking" (Hal Turner)
■ Houthis attack U.S. warship, strike British tanker (Long War Journal)

[■ Houthis attack tanker carrying Russian oil product – reports (RT.com)]

Rachel Marsden | Brussels’ diktat on climate change and support for Ukraine is seen as more important than the people who actually feed the country | The French government is scrambling to get a whole lot of tractors off the nation’s major highways. Good luck with that when 89% of French citizens back the protesting farmers, according to a new Odoxa poll. ● France is joining a movement that now encompasses nearly 20% of the EU, with farmers in five of the bloc’s 27 countries convoying and blockading major roads. Farmers in Poland, Romania, Germany, and the Netherlands have now been joined by their counterparts from the country virtually synonymous with revolution. And one particular incident here in France has just shifted the nascent movement into overdrive.

A speaker at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland has called on globalist elites to push for farming to be labeled a “serious crime.” | Speaking from the WEF’s summit at the luxury Swiss ski resort, “Stop Ecocide Now” founder Jojo Mehta argued that fishing and framing should be considered equal to “genocide.” Mehta insisted that fishing and farming for food should be a “serious crime” while arguing that it is immoral to make money from these industries. “We have this cultural, very ingrained habit of not taking damage to nature as seriously as we take damage to people or property,” she told world leaders, bureaucrats, and corporate elites at the event. She continued by claiming that farming, fishing, and presumably hunting, are “mass damage and destruction of nature.”

■ Klaus Schwab: ‘All Humans’ Will ‘Have Implant in Their Brains 10 Years from Now’ (NewsAddict)