https://twitter.com/ilPapiTrumpo/status/1516173158860083206?s=20&t=TaAamSli8Kbo7Ikx3vPqHw

https://twitter.com/ilPapiTrumpo/status/1516169503285075974?s=20&t=TaAamSli8Kbo7Ikx3vPqHw

https://twitter.com/FBNHistory/status/1516120982859272194?s=20&t=EihW2B9-nADhY-0ecnEjKg

18 Apr, 2022 21:52

Battle for Donbass has started — Ukraine

Kiev says the “second phase of the war” has begun

The second phase of the Russian offensive has started, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his advisers claimed on Monday. The government in Kiev said there were reports of heavy fighting on the Donetsk, Lugansk, and Kharkov fronts, and that Ukrainian troops were holding the line.

“We can now confirm that Russian troops have begun the battle for the Donbass, which they have been preparing for a long time,” Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram on Monday evening.

“A large part of the Russian army is now dedicated to this offensive,” he added.

His chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, said earlier that the “second phase of the war” had started in the east, but urged Ukrainians to “believe in our army, it is very strong.”

Russian forces are attacking “along almost the entire front line,” said Alexey Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. “Fortunately, our military is holding on.”

The Russian Defense Ministry did not comment on any ground operations on Monday. There were reports from frontline correspondents about heavy fighting south of Izyum, north of Severodonetsk, and west of Donetsk city. There were also reports of artillery and missile strikes in Kharkov, Nikolaev, and north-western Donetsk regions.

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

https://www.rt.com/russia/554115-ukraine-second-phase-donbass-battle/

18 Apr, 2022 22:11

US billionaires own trillions in largely untaxed wealth – report

American billionaires’ wealth soared almost two-thirds during pandemic, and they’re still not paying taxes on it

The 735 billionaires who call the US home have watched their wealth surge 62% over the last two years, reaching the shocking figure of$4.7 trillion, according to a report by Oxfam America released on Monday.

While the billionaires’ wealth gains show no sign of slowing down, ordinary workers’ earnings have gone up just 10% – meager growth that has been all but cancelled out by hefty increases in the cost of housing, gas, food, and other commodities, with no end in sight to soaring inflation. Many have struggled to rebuild economically after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

A recent ProPublica study found that while the median American family pays a federal income tax rate of 14%, the 25 richest only paid an effective rate of 3.4% from 2014 to 2018. While there are plenty of different reasons the rich may end up paying less, one major cause is that they don’t report a major chunk of their income – something even the Internal Revenue Service was finally forced to admit last year.

“We estimate that 36% of federal income taxes unpaid are owed by the top 1% and that collecting all unpaid federal income tax from this group would increase federal revenues by about $175 billion annually,” the researchers admitted.

Rather than follow up on that discovery, the IRS continues to audit low-income families – those earning $25,000 or less – at a rate five times higher than any other class of taxpayer, according to an analysis conducted last month by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The IRS has admitted “such low audit rates are not optimal,” but has thus far declined to address the problem.

While several US politicians have proposed plans to counter the inexorable ‘trickle-up’ draining working class Americans dry, none have made it to a vote. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) has called for taxing the unrealized capital gains of billionaires, a system that would bring in $56 billion per year in revenues, enough to paid sick leave, family medical leave, and affordable childcare, according to Oxfam’s calculations. California state lawmaker Alex Lee (D-San Jose) has proposed a 1.5% wealth tax on households worth more than $1 billion. Previous attempts to pass such a law in California, home to some of the richest lawmakers in the country, have failed.

At the same time, Oxfam has observed that a global minimum tax on multinational corporations would raise another $63 billion, which the organization argues could fund critical public health needs, including expanding Medicare and Medicaid. While even the Biden administration has backed that idea, it would require the approval of all countries in which the multinationals operate – a difficult consensus to reach on even the least controversial of matters.

https://www.rt.com/news/554116-us-billionaires-wealth-grows/

17 Apr, 2022 13:48

Former fishing village in China has more billionaires than New York

Shenzhen recently kicked The Big Apple down a notch

China now hosts three cities with the greatest number of billionaires in the world, data from Global Rich List, an annual ranking prepared by the Shanghai-based research firm Hurun Report, shows.

The greatest number of billionaires – 144 – live in Beijing, followed by Shanghai with 121. New York used to occupy the third spot with 110, but was recently outdone by Shenzhen, a former fishing village turned China’s Silicon Valley, with 113 of the globe’s most wealthy. The city has been basking in a growing concentration of wealth, adding eight billionaires to its list since last year.

According to Heng Chen, an associate professor of economics at the University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen’s rise stemmed from its efforts to make the city welcoming to businesses, for instance, by offering tax breaks to high-tech companies.

“The structure of the population is still very young compared to other super cities or first-tier cities in China, so that’s one of the reasons why it’s a very attractive place,” he said, adding that Shenzhen authorities “commit a lot of financial resources to attract top talents from the rest of the world.”

Shenzhen started growing rapidly back in 1980, after it was granted the rights of China’s first special economic zone, which allowed the city to attract foreign investment. As a result, its GDP grew from less than $28 million to roughly $475 billion in the last 4 decades.

The city hosts a number of China’s major tech firms, including Huawei and Tencent, which analysts say, draws other big names. In 2021, some 2,500 new high-tech companies were set up in Shenzhen, making their total around 17,000, according to local government data.

Hurun Report says there were 3,381 billionaires in the world as of January 14, 153 more than the previous year, with 1,133 of them living in China. Zhong Shanshan, the founder of beverage company Nongfu Spring, is China’s richest person with a net worth of $72 billion. ByteDance (TikTok owner) founder Zhang Yiming, is second with $54 billion, and Zeng Yuqun, head of electric-vehicle battery maker CATL is third with $53 billion.

However, there are no Chinese billionaires in the global top 10 list, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with a net worth of more than $200 billion remains the world’s richest person.

https://www.rt.com/business/553679-shenzhen-china-billionaires-number/

18 Apr, 2022 21:40

Pentagon to train Ukrainian troops on US guns

Ukrainian instructors will travel to third country to get training on US weapons such as howitzers and radars

The Pentagon intends to provide training to Ukrainian soldiers so they use the howitzers and radars contained in the latest batch of weapons and equipment President Joe Biden ordered sent to Kiev, the US military said on Monday. The training will reportedly take place in another country.

Last week, the US announced it would send $800 million worth of weapons to Kiev. In addition to anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, this batch includes armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and tactical radars, for which the Ukrainians would need training.

The Pentagon is planning to teach Ukrainian trainers how to use the new weapons sometime in the coming days in an unspecified third country, an anonymous US defense official told reporters on Monday. This way, the Ukrainians would train their colleagues on how to use the US weapons, while Washington would avoid having “boots on the ground” in Ukraine itself.

Earlier, the Pentagon revealed that some of the Ukrainian troops in the US were trained in using the Switchblade kamikaze drones, 300 of which were included in the new shipment of weapons.

Among the weapons announced by the Biden administration last week were 500 more Javelin anti-tank missiles, 500 more Stinger anti-air missiles, 10 counter-artillery radars, two air surveillance radars, 200 of the M113 armored personnel carriers, 100 Humvee armored cars, and 18 towed 155mm howitzers, along with some 40,000 rounds of ammunition.

It was not specified which howitzers would be sent, though the presence of the retired M113s suggests they would be the M198 models decommissioned in the last decade, rather than the current M777 in service with the US military.

So far, four flights of weapons from the new package have been dispatched to Ukraine, the anonymous US official told the media.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its tactical aircraft had struck 22 Ukrainian artillery positions on Monday alone, and that Kiev has lost over 1,000 field artillery pieces and 250 rocket artillery launchers since February 24.

Russia has also targeted NATO weapons shipments to Ukraine. On Monday morning, a missile strike against a logistics center in Lvov destroyed “large consignments of foreign weapons that arrived in Ukraine over the past six days from the US and European countries,” said military spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov. On Saturday, Konashenkov said Russian air defenses shot down a Ukrainian transport plane near Odessa, which had been “delivering a large shipment of arms supplied to Ukraine by Western countries.”

(The problem is the US keeps announcing their plan for some doggoned reason…kek)

https://www.rt.com/russia/554113-pentagon-howitzers-ukraine-training/

18 Apr, 2022 22:23

HomeBusiness News

Elon Musk threatens Twitter board

World’s richest man vows to sack social media giant’s directors if his takeover bid succeeds

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has come up with a quick way to lop off some costs if he prevails in a bid to acquire Twitter: ceasing to pay the company’s board members, who have tried to block the takeover, allegedly to the detriment of the shareholders they supposedly represent.

Musk, whose fortune is estimated at nearly $270 billion by Forbes, vowed on Monday to fire Twitter’s directors – or at least cut off their compensation – if and when his $43 billion takeover goes through. He made his comment in response to investment advisor Gary Black, who pointed out that Twitter has been paying its board members $250,000-$300,000 in cash and stock awards annually for their part-time work as outside directors.

“Board salary will be $0 if my bid succeeds, so that’s $3 million/year saved right there,” Musk said in a Twitter post.

Black replied that Musk could shave a further $75 million in annual operating costs if he were to fire 10% of Twitter’s employees – enough savings to underpin $10 billion in financing for the takeover.

Musk plans to take Twitter private after completing the acquisition, which he said will help him unlock the company’s full money-making potential by making it “the platform for free speech around the globe.” Twitter’s board voted unanimously on Friday to adopt a so-called “poison pill” in an effort to block the takeover.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO pointed out on Saturday that with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s upcoming departure from the board next month, the social media giant will be governed by people who own only a handful of shares. “Objectively, their economic interests are simply not aligned with shareholders.”

Black argued that if directors refuse to honor their fiduciary duty to shareholders, they should be removed. Many observers have questioned whether the board is maximizing shareholder returns by standing in the way of last week’s takeover offer of $54.20 per share, which marked a 54% premium over the stock’s market value on January 28, the day before Musk began buying shares of the company.

The South African-born billionaire, who first revealed that he had accumulated a 9.2% stake in Twitter earlier this month, said board members would expose themselves to a “titanic” legal liability if they breach their fiduciary duty to stockholders. He made that comment in response to speculation that Twitter’s board was considering a “poison pill,” which would dilute the stake of a hostile bidder.

A cryptic tweet by Musk on Saturday, saying “Love me tender,” stirred speculation that he will try to take control of Twitter by making a tender offer for the shares that he doesn’t already own. Such a bid would invite all shareholders to tender their stock for sale at the offer price during a certain time period. Tender offers typically exceed the market price of a stock, giving investors a chance to cash out at a profit.

However, the proposed takeover is more than a battle over returns on investment. Musk’s offer has been celebrated by advocates of free speech and assailed by opponents – including some Twitter employees – who argue that he would open up the platform to more “misinformation” and online harassment.

Musk may have gained an unlikely ally in Dorsey, who ripped Twitter’s board on Saturday for its tactics in trying to block the proposed takeover. He said the board has “consistently been the dysfunction of the company.”

(Does anyone get the impression Dorsey worked with the group planning the takeover because he was always held out as the bad guy making the decisions? He told Trump it was the worst mistake iof my life to ban Trump. Was he forced to by the board?)

https://www.rt.com/news/554117-musk-threatens-twitter-board/

>>16102505

I’m not at all saying he’s a good guy, he’s creepy as fuck but he may have resentment towards the board to force him to do something so disastrous for the company

18 Apr, 2022 20:00

Ukrainian ballistic missile plant destroyed – Russia

The facility had been used to refurbish warheads for Tochka-U ballistic missiles

The Russian military has destroyed a military plant used to repair the warheads of Tochka-U ballistic missiles, Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov announced on Monday. The facility was located in the southeast Ukrainian city of Dnepr, formerly known as Dnepropetrovsk.

Soviet-made Tochka-U tactical ballistic missiles have been extensively used by the Ukrainian forces in the conflict with Russia. The system is arguably the longest-reach weapon at Kiev’s disposal, boasting a maximum range of 120km. Units can be fitted with various warheads, including cluster bombs.

This type of missile has been involved in multiple mass-casualty incidents during the conflict, according to Moscow. On March 14, a Tochka-U was launched at Donetsk, the capital of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). The missile, which carried a cluster munition warhead, was intercepted by DPR forces, yet some of its explosive parts hit the city, killing over 20 and injuring at least 36 civilians.

Another incident involving the Tochka-U occurred in the Kiev-controlled city of Kramatorsk on April 8. A missile again said to be loaded with a cluster munitions warhead hit a local railway station being used to evacuate civilians from the war zone. The attack left dozens of civilians killed and injured.

While Ukraine was quick to blame Moscow for the strike, the latter firmly denied any involvement, branding the attack an act of “barbarism” by Kiev's forces. The Russian military pointed out that this type of missile has been retired from active use and branded the accusations “a provocation that has absolutely no relation to reality,” adding that the Tochka-U has only been used by the Ukrainian side during the current conflict.

(lesson here, dont give Nazis a ballistic missile factory, they won’t takd care of it…kek)

https://www.rt.com/russia/554096-ukraine-ballistic-missile-plant/

18 Apr, 2022 19:32

HomeWorld News

Iran issues military warning to Israel

On National Army Day, President Ebrahim Raisi warned the “Zionist regime” against making “the smallest movement” on Iran

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned Israel on Monday that his military would strike “the center of the Zionist regime” if Tel Aviv made “the smallest movement” against Iran. Tehran often makes such bellicose statements on National Army Day, a yearly occasion marked with parades and shows of strength.

“Our message to the Zionist regime is that if you are after normalizing relations with some countries in the region, you must know that not even your smallest movements are hidden from our intelligence, security, and armed forces,” Raisi said, referring to Israel’s recent normalization of diplomatic ties with several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

“And you must know that if you make the smallest movement against the Iranian nation, the destination of our armed forces will be the center of the Zionist regime,” Raisi added.

Iran’s leaders usually use National Army Day to issue such threats to Israel and the United States. Last year’s National Army Day parade featured a display of drones daubed with “Down With Israel” slogans.

However, Iran has followed through on its threats as of late. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed in March to have launched a volley of precision missile strikes at “the Zionists’ strategic center of plotting and evil” in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil. Israel denied operating any such facilities in Iraq.

Behind the scenes, talks aimed at restoring the 2015 Joint

Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) have stalled. The JCPOA is the official title of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Signed by Iran and the US, UK, Russia, France, Germany, China and the EU, the deal promised Iran sanctions relief in exchange for a halt to its nuclear program. Former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018, claiming that Iran was breaching its obligations.

After a year of negotiations in Vienna, Austria, a deal appeared close at hand in February. Russia sought assurances that sanctions imposed on Moscow following its offensive in Ukraine would not prevent it from trading with Iran. While Russia said it received these assurances, Iran then demanded that Washington provide guarantees that any future US president would not withdraw from a new agreement, and asked the US to remove the IRGC from its list of terrorist organizations.

The US has not yet assuaged these concerns, and Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh declared earlier this month that, “America is responsible for the halt of these talks,” calling on the US to “make a political decision for the deal’s revival.”

(Why do they always release pictures of their leaders surrounded by flowers. Weird really)

https://www.rt.com/news/554110-iran-parade-warning-israel/

18 Apr, 2022 19:57

Spain may cut electricity to France – media

Madrid can’t keep prices down at home without shutting off exports to its northern neighbor, a major newspaper claims

(Sounds like the EU/France just fucked themselves and maybe Le Pen will win because of this)

Spain has informed the European Commission that a joint price reduction plan with Portugal may entail restricting energy sales to France, El Pais reported on Monday. Madrid is its northern neighbor's largest single supplier of imported electricity, and the potential restriction comes as the entire EU grapples with soaring energy costs.

Spain and Portugal agreed in late March to cap the price of gas used in electricity generation to the equivalent of 30 euros per megawatt/hour ($32.50). While Brussels granted both countries an exception to its normal rules and allowed this arrangement to go ahead, Madrid and Lisbon then delivered some bad news to Eurocrats.

According to the documents cited by the newspaper, Spain and Portugal will need to impose “some restrictions” on energy sales to France as a result.

Under an alternative system originally proposed by Madrid, electricity exported to France would be charged at a higher rate than that consumed on the Iberian Peninsula. According to El Pais, officials in Brussels are concerned that this arrangement would breach the bloc’s market rules, and Germany and the Nordic countries are reported to be fiercely opposed to this idea.

The College of EU Commissioners will reportedly discuss the issue at their next meeting, which typically takes place weekly.

Although France is a net exporter of electricity, it still imports around 34% of its power, according to figures from 2020. Spain, more than any other single country, provides most of this.

Electricity prices have soared throughout the EU, with customers paying 45% more in March than a year previously. The soaring prices have been driven by uncertainty over whether the EU will embargo Russian gas imports, and shocks to global energy markets as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. Skyrocketing inflation throughout the Western world has also pushed electricity bills higher.

https://www.rt.com/news/554112-spain-restrict-electricity-france/

18 Apr, 2022 23:10

Republicans see Biden as more harmful than Putin

Poll shows more GOP voters believe world would be a better place without the US president than without Russia’s leader

Americans of all political stripes largely agree that the world would be a better place without Vladimir Putin in office as Russia’s president, but Republicans are even more sour on the US leader.

A Morning Consult poll released on Monday revealed that 83% of Americans believe the world would be a better place without Putin in office. Among GOP voters, 84% of respondents said the same of President Joe Biden.

It’s not that Republicans are bigger fans of Putin than are Americans at large. In fact, 83% of Republicans agreed that the world would be better off without Putin running the Kremlin, matching the overall survey result. Independents were slightly less condemning of Putin, with 79% saying the world would be a better place without him in office.

Where the poll responses diverged was on Biden. While nearly seven in eight Republicans see his presence in office as harmful to the world, only 17% of Democrats agreed. Perhaps most concerning for Democrats heading into this year’s midterm elections is that more than half of independents (51%) said they believe the world would be better off without Biden in the White House. By comparison, only 34% of independents said the world would be a worse place without Biden in office.

Putin was the leading villain in the US poll, exceeding Kim Jong-un’s ratio of 78% of respondents saying the world would be better without him. China’s Xi Jinping was next in line, at 59%, followed by Biden, at 51%. Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman came in at 39% and 37%, respectively. Just 12% of respondents said the world would be a better place without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in office.

Biden distinguished himself as the most disappointing US president in 75 years after taking office in January 2021. A Gallup poll released last October showed that he had suffered the biggest decline in presidential approval ratings since Harry Truman was trying to fill the shoes of the late Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. Biden’s approval ratings have continued to slide this year, dropping to 38% in a CNBC poll released last week. That compared with a 46% rating in December, just before the Ukraine crisis began to dominate US media coverage.

https://www.rt.com/news/554118-poll-republicans-see-biden-more-harmful-than-putin/

17 Apr, 2022 17:09

RT reporter discovers banned anti-personnel mines used by Ukraine(VIDEO)

The explosive devices were found during the offensive in Mariupol

Internationally banned MON-50 and MON-90 mines used by the Ukrainian forces were discovered in Mariupol, RT’s Murad Gazdiev reported on Sunday. In 1999, Kiev joined the 1997 Ottawa Convention, which bans use of such devices.

They were found inside the Ilyich steel mill. Russian troops and the Donbass forces expelled “Ukrainian nationalists” from the facility on Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

“This was set up here with a tripwire,” Gazdiev said, standing next to one of the explosive devices that was lying on the floor. More mines were found in wooden crates nearby.

“Ukraine claimed to have destroyed these anti-personnel mines in accordance with the international treaties it had signed. As you can see – it hadn’t. This does seem to show that Ukraine, by all appearances, lied.”

Kiev has not commented on the matter.

In 2020, Igor Lossovky, Ukraine’s deputy envoy to the OSCE, said that Kiev was in the process of destroying the mine arsenal it inherited from Soviet times. He claimed that the remaining mines were being “stored under strict national and international control,” and not used by the Ukrainian Army.

Ukrainian officials and US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch accused Russia of using MON-90 and other anti-personnel mines in Ukraine this month. Neither Russia nor the US, however, is party to the Ottawa Convention.

Mariupol is largely controlled by Russian and Donbass troops, who are facing resistance by small pockets of Ukrainian forces.

https://www.rt.com/russia/554014-ukraine-banned-landmines-mariupol/

>>16102658

The video is goid to watch, I cant seem to be able to post it, too large

Go to article to see it

https://www.rt.com/russia/554014-ukraine-banned-landmines-mariupol/

>>16102822

You assholes are sick, see a therapist

>>16102816

Its kinda funny so that’s news and nothing is funny these day

>>16102768

So maybe Jack dud have regrets and is working ti get Twitter sold Elon and maybe some other investors

>>16102768

This is getting infinitely more exciting these days, and is stimulating my pineal gland