“I'll keep my fingers crossed that Powell is outta there soon,” Norma writes regarding Friday’s missive.

She adds: “The Whiskey Bar video was fantastic!

“Everyone at the Watergate Hotel was so brilliant. It gives me great pride to be associated with Paradigm Press…

“The last request you made, Matt, was the most moving for me.

“When each person voiced what is wrong with the United States, my heart sank lower and lower. When each voiced what is good, the room began to lighten up more and more.

“It was wonderful!”

Thanks for the incredibly kind words, Norma. Glad you found the Whiskey Bar panel informative and even inspiring!

In case any of our readers missed it, do yourself a favor and watch. And if you have an adult beverage in hand, even better…

Send your opinions to, feedback@newsyoucanacton.com

Your Rundown for Friday, June 7, 2024...

Engineered Disaster… Or Engineering Disaster?

It’s hard to believe it’s been one year since the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River was intentionally sabotaged.

Or simply failed…

Here’s a before and after 2023 rendering of the magnitude of flooding caused by the ruptured dam — located in the Russian-controlled region of Kherson, Ukraine:

Courtesy: Moon of Alabama blog

Prior to the dam’s breach, Kyiv allowed water levels upstream of the dam to rise 17 meters in May 2023. (To create maximum damage?)

The evidence for Ukraine’s willingness to wreck its own infrastructure and risk Ukrainian lives was hiding in plain sight.

In December 2022, for instance, The Washington Post said:

• “The Ukrainians… conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages.”

• Later, The New York Times reported in April 2023: “Since the war’s early days, Ukraine has been swift and effective in wreaking havoc on its own territory, often by destroying infrastructure, as a way to foil a Russian army with superior numbers and weaponry.”

Nevertheless, Zelensky pointed the finger at Putin. And vice versa.

Predictably, the media was useless because they failed to ask one simple question: Who benefited? 

It seemed nonsensical to believe Russia would intentionally flood an area of Ukraine it already controlled, especially considering a strategic hydro-electric plant was thereafter disabled and agricultural land was deluged.

At the same time, Zelensky used the opportunity to ask NATO for more weapons(!) as a result of Putin’s “war crime.”

Convenient, no?

Which brings us to the present: “An international team of researchers has been studying synthetic aperture radar (SAR) archival data of the dam and evaluating the larger context behind a deadly breach of the Dnieper river dam — whose collapse led to the death of between 59 and 300 people in the region,” says IEEE Spectrum.

“The researchers point out that, according to their analysis, the hydropower dam was showing signs of worrying subsidence” — caving-in or sinking — “months before it was captured by Russia in February 2022, when the country invaded Ukraine.”

“We cannot say the Russians didn’t blow up the dam,” says Pietro Milillo, a researcher and professor at the University of Houston. “But we can say that there was something going on before. And if there was no maintenance going on, this could have been another cause of collapse.”

Which also means, we point out, they cannot say the Ukrainians didn’t blow up the dam.

Market Rundown for Friday, June 7, 2024

The S&P 500 is down 0.30% to 5,335.

Oil is up 0.25% to $75.80 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 2% to $2,343.50 per ounce.

And Bitcoin is up 0.65% to $71,175.

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