Bill and Hillary Clinton supported Harris presidential run for their own benefit - report

Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife, ex-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, backed Kamala Harris because of the desire to make their daughter Chelsea ambassador to the UK, the New York Post writes, quoting sources.

The Clintons were "working on this idea for a long time," according to the newspaper's source.

"I can well imagine that the UK ambassadorship is an aspiration for Chelsea, although she is a bit junior still — and London usually goes to a massive donor or fundraiser,” a British embassy official stated, noting that Chelsea Clinton is currently serving as the Clinton Foundation’s vice chair.

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What sort of US support can Netanyahu count on after kicking Mideast hornet’s nest?

Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden spoke by phone Thursday to discuss “efforts to support Israel’s defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones,” in the wake of Israel’s killings of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. The discussion reportedly included “new defensive US military deployments.”

Here’s the “support” the US has already given over the last ten months:

⚡️ Two carrier strike groups, other warship and aircraft squadrons sent to the region to shield Israel against large-scale conventional risks (and later, against the Houthis’ guerilla blockade of the Red Sea). 2,000 US troops put on alert, and new Patriot and THAAD sites set up.

⚡️ Over $12.5 billion in arms aid commitments, including a $8.7 bln supplemental approved in April, plus the usual $3.8 bln in annual support. Israel has spent the money on Iron Dome interceptors, guided missiles, bunker buster bombs, 57,000+ 155-mm artillery shells, 14,000+ tank shells, and more. The US greenlit a $3 bln Israeli acquisition of 25 more F-35 jets in June.

⚡️ Washington briefly paused 500 and 2,000-pound bomb deliveries in May amid global outrage over how Israel uses them, but resumed shipments of the former in July. The US has sent over 14,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, and 6,500 500-pound bombs since October.

⚡️ In April, after Iran launched a missile and drone barrage at Israel in response to the bombing of its Embassy compound in Damascus, the US, UK, France and Jordan deployed jets and other assets to try to foil the attack. Israel escaped with light damage, but a military base used to mount the Damascus strike was hit, proving Iran’s deterrent power.

⚡️ Netanyahu has carefully lobbied to try to pull the US directly into the fray. Last week, during a visit to Washington, he proposed the creation of a new NATO-style bloc against Iran involving Israel, the US, and friendly Arab countries.

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Who is Vadim Krasikov, released in Russia's prisoner swap with the West?

Among the eight Russians released from custody in a number of NATO countries was 58-year-old Vadim Krasikov.

⚡️ According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, Krasikov is an FSB officer who served in the elite ‘Alfa’ counterterrorism task forces along with some current employees of the Presidential Security Service, who – alongside with President Putin – greeted him at the airport.

⚡️ Krasikov was referred to as a Russian “patriot” by Putin in his exclusive interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. When asked about negotiations to release the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, convicted in Russia for espionage, Putin stopped short of naming Krasikov as part of a potential swap.

But he said: "That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals. During the events in the Caucasus, do you know what he [the bandit] was doing? I don’t want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying down our soldiers who had been taken prisoner on the road and then he drove his car over their heads."

Putin added that Russia's requests to extradite Krasikov had gone unheeded.

⚡️ During a visit to Washington on February 9, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed to set in motion the swap including Krasikov. “For you, I will do this,” Scholz told Biden, the FT reports, citing a US administration official.

⚡️ Krasikov was arrested in Germany in 2019 and accused of killing terrorist Zelimkhan Khangoshvili – an ethnic Chechen with Georgian citizenship – on German soil.
On August 23, 2019, Khangoshvili was shot in the head in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten Park on his way back from a mosque by a man on a bicycle.

⚡️ Khangoshvili was a commander of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria – a militant group in Russia's south – which fought against the country's government in the Second Chechen War. He committed numerous war crimes. According to Russian authorities, Khangoshvili was involved in organizing the attack on a school in Beslan in 2004 which resulted in the deaths of 334 people, including 186 children, as well as deadly explosions in the Moscow metro. Considered a terrorist by the FSB, Khangoshvili fled Russia after the Chechen war and moved to Germany, living under a fake identity.

⚡️ German police claimed the detained suspect was Russian national "Vadim Sokolov," whose real name was Vadim Krasikov. Investigators claimed that the suspect had been ordered to murder Khangoshvili by "Russian government agencies". The Kremlin has described allegations of its role in the affair as “absolutely groundless”.

⚡️ On December 15, 2021, the Berlin High Court found Sokolov, alias Krasikov, guilty of the murder of Khangoshvili and sentenced him to life imprisonment. His defense insitsed there was insufficient evidence to convict him.
The killing of Khangoshvili set off a diplomatic row between Russia and Germany, with tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.

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Scott Ritter: US withdrawal from INF Treaty five years ago put arms control ‘back to square one’

“On August 2, 2019, then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, claiming that the Russians were cheating," Scott Ritter recalled to Sputnik on the fifth anniversary of the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, explaining how and why the move has made the world a more dangerous place.

"The US provided no evidence whatsoever to back up these claims, and it appears that what the US was doing was signaling its dissatisfaction with the treaty that, while bilateral in nature, allowed China, for instance, to have intermediate-range missiles. Rather than negotiate with the Chinese directly, the United States withdrew from the treaty. The Russians didn't overreact. They were unhappy with this turn of events, but they said so long as the United States doesn't deploy intermediate-range systems into Europe, Russia's not going to build new intermediate systems nor deploy them,” Ritter recalled.

That all changed when the US deployed the Mark 70 containerized launch system, which in addition to the SM-06 short-range interceptor missiles can fire ground-launched cruise missiles, in Europe, according to Ritter.

“Now the United States is talking about deploying a new system, the two-stage Dark Eagle intermediate-range system with hypersonic reentry vehicles. And the Russians have said enough is enough. So now Russia is talking about not only starting to build their own intermediate nuclear systems but deploying them. We're back to square one. The world is a much more dangerous place today because of the actions of the United States,” the observer said.

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⚡️ Scott Ritter: Some swapped prisoners were likely ‘on CIA payroll’

⚡️ Spy swap with West shows ‘Russia is in the driver's seat’ - political scientist

⚡️ What sort of US support can Netanyahu count on after kicking Mideast hornet’s nest?

⚡️ Scott Ritter: US withdrawal from INF Treaty five years ago put arms control ‘back to square one’

⚡️ EU ‘stands little chance’ of turning Central Asian nations against Russia – political analyst

⚡️ Who is Vadim Krasikov, released in Russia's prisoner swap with the West?

⚡️ Gulf of Tonkin incident and the art of American false flags

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US move to scrap INF Treaty made world ‘more dangerous’ place, put Europe in nuclear peril - Former DoD analyst

“It really makes the world more dangerous as a consequence. And certainly, it…put Europe in greater peril because of this. And it's all because of the United States,” veteran former Pentagon senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik, commenting on the fifth anniversary of the Trump administration’s unilateral decision to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

Blaming neocons including Trump national security advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for ramming through decisions to tear up arms control agreements with Moscow, Maloof suggested that Washington also had other reasons to want to pull out of the INF – including the fact that it didn’t cover the arsenals of other countries with missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, including China.

Russia continued to honor the INF even after the US started to deploy treaty-violating Aegis Ashore anti-missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, the observer recalled, pointing out that in addition to anti-missile defenses, these sites could be used to launch offensive Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Washington’s plans to station ground-based missiles in Germany starting in 2026 are even more destabilizing, Maloof stressed, pointing out that it flies in the face of NATO’s claims that it’s a defensive alliance, and “will create a higher degree of uncertainty, vulnerability and an unease” with Russia that “will be nothing but destabilizing in the long run.”

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Take me back to Russia: Spies freed in swap honoured by Putin, embarrassed by Biden

As the prisoners exchange between Russia and some NATO-countries took place on August 1, the former detainees were greeted very differently in Russia than in the US.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that all the returned would be presented with state honors.

In contrast, current US leader Joe Biden said to a freed prisoner's 12-year-old daughter: "No serious guys until you're 30."

What could be even more cringe? Perhaps Vice-President Kamala Harris’ word-salad to TV cameras.

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EU's attempt to ditch Russian gas falters as US LNG shifts to Asia

Europe can’t do without Russian natural gas – the latest statistics show that US attempts to “replace” Russian pipeline gas supplies to the EU with its own LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports failed.

Following the EU's sanctions on Russian energy supplies in March 2022, the share of US LNG in Europe's gas consumption initially increased. However, it later declined as higher prices from Asian buyers redirected LNG exports to the Pacific instead of the Atlantic.

Soon, US LNG faced renewed competition from Russia, which increased its LNG supplies to Europe. Russia's share of the EU's gas consumption rose from 4% in 2021 to 6% by August 2024.

Bloomberg and Business Insider report that Russian and US LNG supplies to the EU are now nearly equal.

“At the end of July, Europe imported 1.5 million metric tons of LNG from the US, just slightly more than the 1.3 million tons the region imported from Russia in the same period,” Business Insider wrote, citing data from the US Department of Energy.

The trend was confirmed by Bloomberg: “The gap between the two countries’ LNG deliveries to western Europe shrank in July to the narrowest since late 2021, according to preliminary ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.”

The US Department of Energy attributes the 9.3% drop in LNG supplies to the EU to American companies finding more lucrative markets in Asia.

The EU's goal to eliminate reliance on Russian oil and gas has proven unachievable:

⚡️ First, because Russian energy remains geographically closer and irreplaceable for European industry.

⚡️ Second, because US energy companies prioritize profits over Western solidarity, directing LNG to higher-paying Asian markets, according to Bloomberg.

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Is Argentina's gold at risk of never returning?

Two shipments of gold from the Central Bank of Argentina were sent abroad, Economy Minister Luis Caputo confirmed in an interview with La Nación.

“If you have that gold outside, you can get a profit, and the reality is that the country needs to maximize the return on its assets,” Caputo argued.

Economist Juan Valerdi expressed concern over the risks of sending bullion to foreign banks as collateral for loans. "At the slightest non-compliance by Argentina, we must say goodbye to this physical gold," he said in an interview with Sputnik.

"Even if Argentina doesn't commit an infraction, that physical gold won't return to Argentina. There's a shortage, and the last thing they'll do is return that gold, even if a future Argentine government claims it," Valerdi stressed.

The expert also warned that Argentina could face asset confiscations abroad, similar to those experienced by Venezuela and Russia at the hands of the US, UK and EU.

“If Argentina misbehaves with NATO or if the US dislikes a future government, they will automatically seize that gold, as they did with Russia, and likely with other countries,” Valerdi explained.

Alexis Roman Kalczynski, Coordinator of Institutional Policies in Argentina, criticized Caputo’s actions, stating that he was “giving Argentine capital and sovereignty to foreign countries" and that "losing ownership and jurisdiction is a direct surrender to future seizures."

Last month, the Central Bank of Argentina sent approximately $450 million-worth of gold abroad via British Airways flights. The Economy Ministry has not yet confirmed the destination of the gold bars.

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