Feb 242021
 
 February 24, 2021  Posted by at 10:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Rembrandt van Rijn The Storm on the Sea of Galilee 1633
On March 18, 1990, the painting was stolen by thieves disguised as police officers. They broke into the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, and stole this painting, along with twelve other works. The paintings have never been recovered, and it is considered the biggest art theft in history. The empty frames of the paintings still hang in their original location, waiting to be recovered.

 

The Vaccine (Dis)Information War (CJ Hopkins)
Censoring Fox News Is An Insanely Stupid Idea (Taibbi)
House Democrats Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms (Greenwald)
Twitter Adds Controversial ‘Hacked Materials’ Warning Label To Tweets (Mash.)
Naomi Wolf Sounds Alarm At Growing Power Of ‘Autocratic Tyrants’ (Fox)
Tucker Carlson Calls CNN a ‘Disinformation Network’ (Med.)
60 Years After Eisenhower’s Warning, The ‘Digital-Intelligence Complex’ (RCI)
Why a Durham Report Is Becoming Highly Unlikely (ET)
US And Allies To Build ‘China-free’ Tech Supply Chain (Nikkei)
Finland COVID-19 Variant Reportedly May Not Show Up In Tests (NYP)
Japan Appoints “Minister Of Loneliness” (ZH)

 

 

A Minister of Loneliness in Japannn. That is what the Lockdown Syndrome looks like. And when you weren’t looking because you were getting “vaccinated”, your freedoms were taken away one by one. The freedom to be where you want to be, the freedom to say what you want to say, and the freedom to read what you want to read.

The calls for all manner of censorship are coming fast and furious, including censorship of COVID and vaccine-related information. Because you are not supposed -or allowed- to know. But what’s the value of all these technologies, be they digital or medical, if they end up being used against us?

 

 

 

 

“We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows?”

The Vaccine (Dis)Information War (CJ Hopkins)

So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations! OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point. Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes” we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows?

In another hundred years, we will probably be able to genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases, and emotional and behavioral disorders.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The important thing at the moment is to defeat this common-flu-like pestilence that has no significant effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile, but which has nonetheless left the global corporatocracy no choice but to “lock down” the entire planet, plunge millions into desperate poverty, order everyone to wear medical-looking masks, unleash armed goon squads to raid people’s homes, and otherwise transform society into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare. And, of course, the only way to do that (i.e., save humanity from a flu-like bug) is to coercively vaccinate every single human being on the planet Earth!

OK, you’re probably thinking that doesn’t make much sense, this crusade to vaccinate the entire species against a relatively standard respiratory virus, but that’s just because you are still thinking critically. You really need to stop thinking like that. As The New York Times just pointed out, “critical thinking isn’t helping.” In fact, it might be symptomatic of one of those “disorders” I just mentioned above.

Read more …

“All that remains is to topple a behemoth like Fox as a show of strength, leaving an untouchable Soviet-style union of Chuck Todds and Jennifer Rubins and Max Boots in charge of disseminating an approved™ top-down version of reality. “

Censoring Fox News Is An Insanely Stupid Idea (Taibbi)

Two and a half years ago, when Alex Jones of Infowars was kicked off a series of tech platforms in a clearly coordinated decision, I knew this was not going to be an isolated thing. Given that people like Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy were saying the ouster of Jones was just a “good first step,” it seemed obvious the tactic was not going to be confined to a few actors. But corporate media critics insisted the precedent would not be applied more broadly. “I don’t think we are going to be seeing big tech take action against Fox News… any time soon,” commented CNN’s Oliver Darcy. Darcy was wrong. Just a few years later, calls to ban Fox are not only common, they’re intensifying, with media voices from Brian Stelter on CNN to MSNBC analyst Anand Giridharadas to former Media Matters critic Eric Boehlert to Washington Post columnists Max Boot and Margaret Sullivan all on board.

The movement crested this week with a letter from California House Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, written to the CEOs of cable providers like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, and Dish. They demanded to know if those providers are “planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN… beyond any contract renewal date” and “if so, why? The news comes in advance of Wednesday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on “traditional media’s role in promoting disinformation and extremism.” This sequence of events is ominous because a similar matched set of hearings and interrogations back in 2017 — when Senators like Mazie Hirono at a Judiciary Committee hearing demanded that platforms like Google and Facebook come up with a “mission statement” to prevent the “foment of discord” — accelerated the “content moderation” movement that now sees those same platforms regularly act as de facto political censors.

Sequences like this — government “requests” of speech reduction, made to companies subject to federal regulation — make the content moderation decisions of private firms a serious First Amendment issue. Censorship advocates may think this is purely a private affair, in which the only speech rights that matter are those of companies like Twitter and Google, but any honest person should be able to see this for what it is. [..] Press freedoms have been in steep decline for a while. Barack Obama’s record targeting of whistleblower sources (and in some cases, journalists themselves) using the Espionage Act was a first serious sign, followed by Donald Trump’s prosecution of Julian Assange. We progressed to a particularly dangerous new stage in recent years, with oligopolistic tech companies, urged on by politicians, engaging in anticompetitive agreements to suppress political voices on both the left and the right.

The so-called media reporters at major organizations like CNN and the New York Times have mostly either been silent or have played cheerleading roles during the most eyebrow-raising recent developments: the decision by Facebook and Twitter to block access to a pre-election New York Post story about Hunter Biden, the stunning exercise in monopoly influence by Amazon and Apple in swallowing up the “free speech” platform Parler, the banning of Socialist Worker Party accounts in England and the U.S., and the shutdown of livestream capability by alternative media outlets (and the removal of celebrated footage shot from the Capitol riot by people like Status Coup videographer Jon Farina), a story that amazingly only got major play at… Fox News.

Read more …

They’re assaulting free speech. Not just press freedoms.

House Democrats Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms (Greenwald)

Not even two months into their reign as the majority party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress, key Democrats have made clear that one of their top priorities is censorship of divergent voices. On Saturday, I detailed how their escalating official campaign to coerce and threaten social media companies into more aggressively censoring views that they dislike — including by summoning social media CEOs to appear before them for the third time in less than five months — is implicating, if not already violating, core First Amendment rights of free speech. Now they are going further — much further. The same Democratic House Committee that is demanding greater online censorship from social media companies now has its sights set on the removal of conservative cable outlets, including Fox News, from the airwaves.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday announced a February 24 hearing, convened by one of its sub-committees, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Claiming that “the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,” the Committee argues: “Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.” Since when is it the role of the U.S. Government to arbitrate and enforce precepts of “journalistic integrity”? Unless you believe in the right of the government to regulate and control what the press says — a power which the First Amendment explicitly prohibits — how can anyone be comfortable with members of Congress arrogating unto themselves the power to dictate what media outlets are permitted to report and control how they discuss and analyze the news of the day?

[..] For the last four years, we were inundated with media messaging that Trump posed an unprecedented threat to press freedoms. The Washington Post even flamboyantly adopted a new motto to implicitly ratify that accusation (while claiming it was not Trump-specific). Other than the indictment of Julian Assange — which most Washington Democrats cheered — what did the Trump administration do in the way of attacking press freedoms that remotely compares to Democrats abusing their majoritarian power to force the removal of conservative cable outlets from the airwaves, just days after doing the same with dissident voices online?

There is not a peep of protest from any liberal journalists. Do any of the people who spent four years pretending to care so deeply about the vital role of press freedom have anything to say about this full frontal attack by the majority party in Washington on news outlets opposed to their political agenda and ideology?

Read more …

Twitter is full of tweets that MIGHT contain hacked materials.

Twitter Adds Controversial ‘Hacked Materials’ Warning Label To Tweets (Mash.)

“These materials may have been obtained through hacking,” reads the disclaimer affixed to a tweet linking to a story from independent news outlet, The Grayzone. The tweet was originally posted on Feb. 20. However, three days later, users began to notice the label added to The Grayzone’s tweet. (It is not yet clear when exactly the label appeared.) Furthermore, readers discovered that an extra step was added when trying to retweet posts linking to The Grayzone’s story: A pop-up appeared reiterating the warning label and asking users to “help keep Twitter a place for reliable info.” A link is included which forwards users to Twitter’s “distribution of hacked materials” policy.


The Grayzone’s story sources recently hacked and leaked documents which allegedly show that the BBC and Reuters participated in a program created by the UK government to “weaken Russia’s state influence.” This appears to be the first instance of Twitter using this particular warning label on an English-language outlet. A search on the platform found one other instance of a version of the “hacked materials” warning label being used. This one was stamped on an Italian outlet’s tweet regarding Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in January. “These materials may have been obtained through hacking or may be manipulated,” reads the earlier warning label on the tweet, which is in Italian.

Read more …

”.. the United States is swiftly “moving into a coup situation, a police state..”

Naomi Wolf Sounds Alarm At Growing Power Of ‘Autocratic Tyrants’ (Fox)

America is becoming a “totalitarian state before our eyes” under President Biden’s leadership, feminist author and former Democratic adviser Naomi Wolf told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Monday. Wolf, who served as an adviser on Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign in 1996, told host Tucker Carlson that in her view, the United States is swiftly “moving into a coup situation, a police state” as a result of Biden’s ongoing coronavirus-related economic shutdowns. Wolf added that she believes the orders are being improperly extended under the “guise of a real medical pandemic.” “That is not a partisan thing,” Wolf told Carlson. “That transcends everything that you and I might disagree or agree on. That should bring together left and right to protect our Constitution.”

Wolf has ramped up her warnings against extended lockdowns on Twitter in recent months. In November, the author wrote on Twitter that Biden’s openness to reinstating additional shutdowns made her question her decision to vote for him. “The state has now crushed businesses, kept us from gathering in free assembly to worship as the First Amendment provides, is invading our bodies … which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, restricting movement, fining us in New York state … the violations go on and on,” she said. The outspoken liberal, who previously authored a book outlining the ten steps that “would-be tyrants always take when they want to close down a democracy,” believes the United States is heading toward what she refers to as “step 10.”

“Whether they are on the left or the right, they do these same ten things,” Wolf explained, “and now we’re at something I never thought I would see in my lifetime … it is step 10 and that is the suspension of the rule of law and that is when you start to be a police state, and we’re here. There is no way around it.” Wolf said she has interviewed U.S. citizens of various backgrounds and political affiliations who are in a state of “shock and horror” as “autocratic tyrants at the state and now the national level are creating this kind of merger of corporate power and government power, which is really characteristic of totalism fascism in the ’20’s,” she told Carlson.

Read more …

“..more powerful than QAnon and far more destructive.”

Tucker Carlson Calls CNN a ‘Disinformation Network’ (Med.)

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson went after CNN on Tuesday night and called the cable news rival “more powerful” and “more destructive” than the QAnon conspiracy theory. Carlson brought up people on CNN talking about disinformation online and said they’re the ones who are really pushing disinformation, telling viewers that CNN is upset at the internet because “it’s exposing their scam.” In particular Carlson referred to coverage from CNN and others about issues of race and police shootings. “It’s worth finding out where the public is getting all this false information, this disinformation, as we will call it,” Carlson mockingly said. “So we checked. We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which in the end we learned is not even a website.


“If it’s out there, we could not find it. Then we checked Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter feed because we have heard she traffics in disinformation, CNN told us, but nothing there.” He continued taking shots at CNN, and said the media talking about racism is meant to distract people from questions about Wall Street, before concluding with this: “It takes a sophisticated operator to lie this effectively, to take the central problem of American life, which is the agonizing death of our middle class and cover it with a smokescreen of manufactured race hatred, so that no one even realizes it’s happening. You’d really need to be a — as CNN would put it — a disinformation network to pull that off. And of course the irony is… CNN itself has become a disinformation network, more powerful than QAnon and far more destructive.”

Read more …

Inevitable.

60 Years After Eisenhower’s Warning, The ‘Digital-Intelligence Complex’ (RCI)

In June 2019, Susan Gordon stood on a stage at the Washington Convention Center. Behind her loomed three giant letters, “AWS,” the abbreviation for Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of the giant Internet retailer. After three decades at the Central Intelligence Agency, Gordon had risen to one of the top jobs in the cloak-and-dagger world: principal deputy director of national intelligence. From that perch she publicly extolled the virtues of Amazon Web Services and the cloud services the tech giant provides the CIA. She told the crowd that the intelligence community’s 2013 decision to sign a multi-year, $600 million contract with AWS for cloud computing “will stand as one of those that caused the greatest leap forward.

… The investment we made so many years ago in order to be able to try and harness the power of the cloud with a partner who wanted to learn and grow with us has left us not only ready for today but positioned for tomorrow.”The agreement was also a “real game-changer,” said André Pienaar, founder and CEO of a tech firm called C5 Capital, whose business includes reselling AWS services. “When the CIA said they were going adopt the AWS cloud platform,” Pienaar said at another AWS event. “People said if the U.S. intelligence community has the confidence to feel secure on the AWS cloud, why can’t we?” Gordon left government in August 2019, two months after her AWS summit talk. In November 2019 she became senior advisor to a consultancy with close Amazon connections and in April joined the board of defense contractor with extensive AWS business.

Gordon is one of scores of former government officials who have landed lucrative work in Big Tech. The synergy between Washington and Silicon Valley can be seen as the latest manifestation of the Beltway’s revolving door. But the size and scope of Big Tech – and the increasing dependence of government on its products and talent – suggest something more: the rise of a Digital-Intelligence Complex. Like the Military-Industrial Complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in 1961, it represents a symbiotic relationship in which the lines between one and the other are blurred.

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They’re first going demand to see what he has and then silence him.

Why a Durham Report Is Becoming Highly Unlikely (ET)

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee say they want to know if President Joe Biden’s nominee for Attorney General Merrick Garland will allow Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane probe to continue. “I have no reason to think he should not remain in place,” Garland told Sen. Chuck Grassley Monday.In reality, if confirmed Garland will not allow Durham to stay in place, never mind issue a report. The prospect that Biden’s attorney general might allow Durham to indict former Barack Obama administration officials is ludicrous. Remember that documents released over the last year gave evidence that as vice-president Biden was not only aware of the spying operation against Trump officials but participated in it.

Biden not only knew that the FBI was framing incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn but suggested that the Department of Justice might charge Flynn for violating the Logan Act. In other words, the FBI officials that Durham is reportedly investigating are Biden’s co-conspirators. To allow them to be indicted would not only point to Biden’s guilt but also show that the most powerful man in the world is unable or unwilling to protect allies who have helped advance the cause of the party he now leads. That would show Biden to be weak. Garland understands that his primary duty as Biden’s chief law enforcement officer is not to oversee the fair and equal treatment of all Americans under the law, but to protect the president and the party he serves.

[..] Biden’s attorney general has an additional incentive to shut down Durham for good. Let’s say the special counsel has the evidence to indict the senior FBI officials he has been investigating. That would confirm what Republicans have been saying about Crossfire Hurricane since 2017—the FBI wasn’t investigating Russian interference, it was spying on a presidential candidate and then the commander-in-chief. To show that Biden’s party was lying about that would suggest that maybe the Democrats were lying about other things, too, maybe lying about everything. They lied about the phone call that got Trump impeached; they lied about the “mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots; they lied about the Jan. 6 protests by calling them an armed insurrection; and most importantly, they lied about the transparency and legitimacy of the 2020 election.

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“The U.S. has seen its share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity plummet in recent decades, according to Boston Consulting Group. What was 37% in 1990 is now down to 12%.”

US And Allies To Build ‘China-free’ Tech Supply Chain (Nikkei)

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to sign an executive order as early as this month to accelerate efforts to build supply chains for chips and other strategically significant products that are less reliant on China, in partnership with the likes of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. The document will order the development of a national supply chain strategy, and is expected to call for recommendations for supply networks that are less vulnerable to disruptions such as disasters and sanctions by unfriendly countries. Measures will focus on semiconductors, electric-vehicle batteries, rare-earth metals and medical products, according to a draft obtained by Nikkei.

The order states that “working with allies can lead to strong, resilient supply chains,” suggesting that international relationships will be central to this plan. Washington is expected to pursue partnerships with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea in chip production and Asia-Pacific economies including Australia in rare earths. The U.S. plans to share information with allies on supply networks for important products and will look to leverage complementary production. It will consider a framework for speedy sharing of these items in emergencies, as well as discuss securing stockpiles and spare manufacturing capacity. Partners could be asked to do less business with China.

The issue has taken on added urgency with a chip shortage this year that has hit automakers particularly hard. The U.S. has seen its share of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity plummet in recent decades, according to Boston Consulting Group. What was 37% in 1990 is now down to 12%. While it has asked Taiwan — which tops the list at 22% — to ramp up output, plants there are already operating at full blast, and there are few options for boosting supply in the short term.

Read more …

You’re using the wrong test.

Finland COVID-19 Variant Reportedly May Not Show Up In Tests (NYP)

Scientists fear that a new COVID-19 variant in Finland — different from the UK and South African strains — may be fueling the spread of the disease by not showing up in tests, according to reports. The Helsinki-based Vita Laboratories, which made the discovery, said it’s unlikely the variant emerged in Finland, given the Scandinavian country’s low rate of infection, the Evening Standard reported. “Vita Laboratoriot Oy and the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Helsinki have detected a previously unknown variant of the coronavirus in a sample from southern Finland,” the lab said about the variant, dubbed “Fin-796H.”


“Mutations in this variant make it difficult to detect in at least one of the WHO-recommended PCR tests. This discovery could have a significant impact on determining the spread of the disease,” it added. Ilkka Julkunen, a professor of virology at the University of Turku, told the local news outlet Yle that the emergence of the variant was not a major concern yet. “I would not be hugely worried yet because we do not have clear information that this new strain would be more easily transmitted or that it would affect the immune protection brought about by already having had the virus or having received a vaccination,” he said, according to the Standard.

Read more …

Lockdown Syndrome.

Japan Appoints “Minister Of Loneliness” (ZH)

Japan like many other developed nations witnessed an alarming rise in suicides or attempted suicides over this past year of pandemic shutdowns and social distancing measures. The country was already at crisis levels even before the pandemic (though generally on a downward trajectory the prior decade), with recent studies showing it to be “the leading cause of death in men among the ages of 20-44 and women among the ages of 15 to 34.” To tackle the crisis, especially in the midst of this COVID-induced period of greater social isolation, Japan’s government has appointed a “Minister of Loneliness” after the UK became the first country to establish such a position in 2018.

The most recent numbers cited in Japanese media reports say that 879 women killed themselves in the country during the month of October, a figure that marks a whopping 70% increase compared to the same month from 2019. Officials have noted that the pandemic and oftentimes mandated social distancing measures have appeared to have a harsher impact on women. According to Japan Times, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga earlier in the month appointed as the new Minister of Loneliness a 70-year old veteran politician named Tetsushi Sakamoto. It is a cabinet level position which aims to alleviate social isolation among citizens.

He’ll head up an ’emergency taskforce’ to battle the disturbing spike in suicides nationally as his first order of business. “With isolation tied to an array of social woes such as suicide, poverty and hikikomori (social recluses), the Cabinet Office also established a task force Friday that seeks to address the problem of loneliness across various ministries, including by investigating its impact,” Japan Times writes. “According to preliminary figures released by the National Police Agency, 20,919 people took their own lives in 2020, up 750 from the previous year and marking the first year-on-year increase in 11 years. The surge is largely attributed to a noticeable rise in suicides among women and young people,” the report pointed out.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle February 24 2021

  • This topic has 22 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 3 years ago by Germ.
Viewing 23 posts - 1 through 23 (of 23 total)
  • Author
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  • #70152

    Rembrandt van Rijn The Storm on the Sea of Galilee 1633 On March 18, 1990, the painting was stolen by thieves disguised as police officers. They broke
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 24 2021]

    #70153
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Quote for the day:

    Robert Kagan Diagnosed America’s Biggest Problem: Americans Who Don’t Want To Run the World
    by Doug Bandow Posted on February 22, 2021

    All great powers” want to rule the world, declared Robert Kagan, propagandist for America as imperial power, democratic hegemon, aggressive unipower, and perpetual war machine. However, they typically fail. Wrote Kagan in a new Foreign Affairs article: “Much of the drama of the past century resulted from great powers whose aspirations exceeded their capacity.”

    The U.S. has a different problem, he contended. The American people. Rather than realize their unique calling to sacrifice themselves and obey their betters when instructed to patrol the globe, they continued to look inward.

    They failed to realize that their destiny is to impose order upon independent and subservient, judge innocent and guilty, wage war upon great and small, and, yes, kill anyone who and destroy anything which gets in the way of fulfilling this sacred duty. Instead of focusing on the wishes of Washington, D.C., the world’s imperial city, and rising to the greatness expected of them by supporting the aggrandizements of a globally dominant America, they focused on the local and personal – their careers and educations, their communities and towns, their clubs and associations, and their families and friends.

    Yes, he admitted, “they have met the challenges of Nazism and Japanese imperialism, Soviet communism, and radical Islamist terrorism.” However, they saw these efforts as “exceptional responses to exceptional circumstances. They do not see themselves as the primary defender of a certain kind of world order; they have never embraced that ‘indispensable’ role.”

    Such a revelation could shock only a certified ivory tower warrior, who believes that his comparative advantage in life is coming up with wars for patriotic young men and women across the country to fight. Not to defend America. But to create and preserve “a liberal world order” designed by the foreign policy equivalent of a priestly class, of which Kagan must be at least an archbishop or cardinal. It would be tempting to dismiss such arguments as the ravings of an accomplished, even celebrated policy entrepreneur. However, top officials have picked up these arguments, making them central to dealing with the rest of the world.

    Consider the egregious Madeleine Albright, former UN ambassador and secretary of state, author of multiple books and articles, member of endless commissions and panels, and all-around Washington paladin. She has become an apt if unusually celebrated representative of the foreign policy establishment. Preemptively channeling Robert Kagan more than two decades ago, she declared: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America: we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”

    Being all-knowing and all-seeing naturally gives the US the right to impose its will on the rest of the world irrespective of the cost to others. As Albright explained, when asked about the humanitarian toll from sanctions on Iraq: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

    https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/02/21/robert-kagan-diagnosed-americas-biggest-problem-americans-who-dont-want-to-run-the-world/

    That price was 1 Million dead Iraqi children. Somebody else pays. Love. Tolerance. Supporting human rights for brown people worldwide. No wonder they are our leaders, our betters! Thank God we took out Baathist Saddam who was totally unrelated to Sunni Al Qeada terrorists and killed 2 million more! Manifest Destiny. “Theirs is not to reason why; theirs is but to do…and die.”

    #70154
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Rembrandt van Rijn The Storm on the Sea of Galilee 1633

    Dramatic, stunning, and the light……………

    #70156
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Hopkin’s problem is that there’s nothing you can say anymore that’s more stupid and illogical than real life. Or, in my frustration, the stupid and illogical people who keep cooperating and keep it going in order to erase all human rights on earth.

    “Attorney General Merrick Garland will allow Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation”

    Speaking of, it’s amazing to see this sentence even published. The whole and entire POINT of a special prosecutor – soup to nuts – is that he CAN’T be removed. He IS independent, and has autonomy to proceed without interference. But of course that is “rules” and “law” and that doesn’t apply to us. It only applies to THEM, under Mueller. Whatever.

    “Finland COVID-19 Variant Reportedly May Not Show Up In Tests (NYP)”

    Why would I care about a variant that isn’t going to kill me either?

    “Today you inhaled 6 pollen, 27 cotton fluff, 100 Micrococcus, and one flea” Yup. Still fine. Still don’t care. I only care about disease that have a death rate. At all.

    Biden says the world needs to defend democracy. That starts at home.

    He says, as he rounds up and prosecutes anyone who uses democracy, free speech, free assembly, or due process. Meh. Nothing new. Same old, same old, all my life: “You shut up. We’re coming for you, we’re going to take your children to PBS camps/woodchippers, bomb/kill/drone/nuke you and your whole town/state/people.” Blah blah blah.

    Their problem is, that requires work. And logical strategy. They have neither. In fact, they’re crying uncle already, from behind the Great Wall of Pelosi:
    Tweehttps://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Ocasio-Cortez-fake-crying-for-a-parkinglot.png
    Caption: “Let my people go, Ms. Pelosi! Tear down this racist wall that doesn’t work!”

    News article (too slow to capture it), Biden(?) says we SHOULDN’T censor Twitter, etc. Oh What? Do tell. You see, they have all this “Power™”, but the problem is, when they USE this power, people instantly leave and collapse their stock $14B dollars. …Showing they DON’T have any power. …They have what we call in America, an “illusion” “Some bulls—t”, because We. Don’t. Care. So now that they’ve banned 75Million people off their platforms…Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, do I need to finish this sentence?

    …They have half the audience, they have no income, no one credits their ideas, everyone thinks they’re oppressive and stupid, all the cool kids, edgy, fun, and salty go to where they can speak, joke, and mock freely, their competitors, Gab, GAIN 75 million followers and all that income, they lose their “influence”, CNN’s ratings fall 40% in one day and shortly thereafter…die. The End.

    …And here we are. We won. They lost. Need more? Last week we had a 40 year NY Times Journalist discussing the context of using…or rather quoting…the N-word. How to use, not to use, whatever, because it is a word, i.e. “Reality” and a word people use, both positively, among friends, negatively, among enemies, and historically, i.e. “reality” and therefore among the non-insane must be addressed. Although STRICTLY left, totally adopting all correct dogma, he was instantly fired. For opening a dictionary.

    Yesterday a Slate reporter was discussing THAT reporter’s dilemma…and was fired for discussing that someone else once opened a dictionary. So thanks to their ever-spiraling ideological purity test, EVEN THE FURTHEST LEFT ideologues and cult kool aid members are being purged with a mania unseen at the height of the KKKultural Revolution. So where do you think those two will go? Do they die, or like Dido throw themselves into the sea? Um, no. They realize the insanity of what they’re doing, what the left does, and back up into some less-left position that is more free speech. Maybe a little, but it doesn’t take a lot. There aren’t any reporters left to accept these positions of “Pravda” and “Izvestia”. EVERYONE is now on the outside. Clinton advisors and 3rd wave feminists Naomi Wolf are on the outside. Trump hating communists like Greenwald are on the outside. Lifelong Jewish Democrats like Kunstler are on the outside. NY Times editors like Bari Wiess is on the outside. The whole Jewish community is on the outside. The Black Christian community is on the outside. Every small investor is on the outside. 2/3 the cities and 90% of Flyover States are on the outside. Gay hairdressers from NY and trans people from “Walk Away” are on the outside, and actively attacked and purged. Feminist businessowners from Vermont like Borysenko are on the outside. Insiders like McConnell are on the outside. The whole U.S. Military is on the Outside. Could be Andrew Cuomo is now on the outside, taking Newsome with him.

    So…who’s on the inside? Victoria Nuland and Fang Fang?

    What do you think happens now, in that situation? I don’t have to do a thing. You’re doing a great job all on your own. You’re discredited, governors are telling you to F yourself, your currency is crashing, all I have to do is wait with great joy and anticipation at the revelation of your complete failure as human beings. And I can do it with popcorn, in the warm safety of my own home.

    #70157
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Oh! I missed it! Robin DiAngelo, Queen of Critical Race Theory, author of “White Fragility”, $500k-a-pop head of “Wokeness” is on the outside!

    She is now disavowing her own training materials from Coke that said: “Be Less White.”

    Well, what can you expect from a person who says in her own book that she’s a racist. What I couldn’t understand is why, if she’s a racist as she regularly says, everyone wants to follow her and do whatever she says and pays her, America’s most famous avowed racist, big money for her advice, and implement her every policy.

    Well, that’s what happens when #Logos, reason, logic, is your sole enemy.

    The Queen of Woke is on the outside.

    #70158
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    They’re first going demand to see what he has and then silence him.

    • Why a Durham Report Is Becoming Highly Unlikely (ET)

    Hmm, Durham has been pretty silent on his own so shutting him up shouldn’t take much work.

    You’re using the wrong test.

    • Finland COVID-19 Variant Reportedly May Not Show Up In Tests (NYP)

    I love all this fear porn about virus variants. I’m pretty sure that right now I have an undiscovered Caribbean variant that evades tests, is highly contagious, often symptom-less yet kills frail old folks at a disproportionate rate and therefore requires my complete isolation on a sunny tropical island (or mega-yacht) until it is safe for the entire world to return to normal even though we have no idea who else may be infected with this virus variant.

    Good grief what a crock of shit.

    #70159
    absolute galore
    Participant

    For a while now I’ve had this urge to get a t-shirt printed up:

    F*$k Biden
    F*$k Harris
    F*$k Cuomo
    F*$k The NYT
    F*$k Lockdowns

    Or some such variation. In a nice square block print. Living in a smaller Hudson River town a ways up from NYC, I’m amazed and somewhat horrified at how quickly virtually everyone has adopted mask use–outdoors, on uncrowded sidewalks, on foot paths in the woods. As though passing by someone for 1-2 seconds is going to make you die.

    So good for Naomi Wolf. But I don’t see everyone on the outside. It’s scary how quickly people will adopt behaviors without any real reasoning or proof. I guess it could come in handy if/when a real disease comes along, a la the Plague. Meanwhile, walking down the street without a mask feels a little defiant, sometimes uncomfortable. I have to resist the occasional urge to put one on and blend in. In one hopeful sign, over the past week or two I have seen a handful of maskless fellow citizens. (At a city council meeting this week, a council member objected to the word “citizen” and instead suggested “community member.” I wish I was kidding.)

    #70160
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Kagan in any other venue would be bound, gagged, isolated and medicated with enough Haldol to tranquilize a herd of horses. Which brings to mind a recurring theme. One man’s, Kagan’s, megalomanias are another fellow’s grandiose delusions. Those people who adopt Kagan’s lunatic ravings aren’t some sophisticated, erudite priestly sect channeling world class insights. Rather, Albright et al by adopting and internalizing Kagan’s nonsense manifest collective madness or as written on these pages, shared psychosis. The word salad and verbal diarrhea spewed forth are signs of fragile mental health and not qualifications for reference or executive postings. Take care when these nutjobs and ne’er-do-wells develop a cult following among the ruling class.

    On related note, maybe the problem isn’t the destruction imposed upon society by antisocial personality disordered or narcissistic personality disordered people. Perhaps, what we’re witnessing, (medical martial law, high tech tyranny and extreme social isolation) is the result of letting Schizotypals and Schizoids loose from their naturally imposed, socially isolated coding basements to wreck havoc on society armed with a billion dollars each. What else should we expect from folk who eschew intimacy and human contact?

    #70161
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Currency failing? UST 10-years triple:

    10-year
    https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/bfm9A98.jpg?itok=C-p1xQ0K

    That’s going to leave a crater. Bye-bye. Interest on $27 Trillion just tripled.

    #70162
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Spring weather and walk in nearby cemetery, Huge and occupying two city blocks, established in mid XIX century still operating. Sidewalk trotting and breathing of car fumes replaced by pleasant setting of centennial trees, squirrels and birds. Solemn dignity of an old grave markers is slowly being replaced by the new graves with acid etched stone and questionable alloy plaques, set below the grass level for easy lawn mover rumble over it. Very few fellow walkers, heavily masked and approaching, would make a visible jerk-arc to avoid me, unmasked. Then I would ask them, since there the is a pandemic why is it that we are not witnessing at least 50 funerals, right at this moment? Wide eyed, puzzled they would reply that “Actually, they they just saw a few.”. Thus convinced.

    Naomi Wolf. While “some folks” were anxiously watching through the front window at any sign of Mao, Stalin, hammer and sickle marked anything, Solzhenitsyn and gulags corporate fascism slipped in through the back porch door and is already helping itself with the cappuccino machine in the kitchen. “Some folks”, again and still hope that the bulge in the pocket of intruder is abridged version of “Das Capital”.

    #70163
    John Day
    Participant

    @V.Arnold, from a few days ago.
    “Germ” is qualified to assess medical data.
    He studied pharmacology at university.
    Everything he sends me has been top notch.
    You have seen much of it here.
    I have thanked him as “Jeremy”.
    He has read TAE for a long time.

    #70166
    John Day
    Participant

    https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/02/great-resetters.html

    John Ward looks at the “Great Resetters”: Precisely what defines a Resetter?
    ​ ​Starting from a database of 37 million companies (he likes a challenge) Glattfelder used multivariate criteria to boiled off the number to just 1,318 (1) had ties to two or more other companies (2) had an average connection to 20 and (3) collectively owned huge chunks, through shares, the majority of the world’s large blue chip firms – accounting for 60 per cent of global business income.
    ​ ​The more one boils, the smaller the numbers get…with a top ten controlling four-fifths of everything everywhere. They are:
    1. Barclays plc 2. Capital Group Companies Inc. 3. FMR Corporation 4. AXA 5. State Street Corporation 6. JPMorgan Chase & Co. 7. Legal & General Group plc 8. Vanguard Group Inc. 9. UBS AG 10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc.
    ​ ​Also present in the top 25 are Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs.
    Yup, they’re all engaged in bancassurance, and they’re mainly Anglo-American. There are no big manufacturing, energy or pharmafia corporations in the Top 49. There is just one distributor in the shape of Wal-Mart at N° 15.
    T​ ​his is the key insight I offer on this data today: if you want to know what marks out a Great Resetter from the rest, it’s this: they don’t make anything – they simply move stuff around – but they do control the ownership of everything.
    ​ ​This makes them incredibly vulnerable to a global va​l​uation crash….but the only people truly able to engineer a ‘Reset’.
    That’s what I call money, means and motive. But would they ever try such a dastardly thing?
    EXPLOSIVE: STRING-PULLERS AUDITED

    Critics Must Be Silenced for Billionaires to Keep Profiting From Pandemic​, Robert F Kennedy Jr.​
    ​ ​On Feb. 15, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post published a Feb. 11 Associated Press article applauding the censorship of those who criticize the government’s pandemic response policies.
    ​ ​The lockdown has netted Bezos $70 billion since its start. If you are Bezos, a permanent lockdown is a goldmine.
    ​ ​Bill Gates, meanwhile, has made $20 billion from the lockdown he previously war-gamed and then cheer-led. His strategy has included emasculating the independent media — the most likely sources of the sort of vigorous journalism that might otherwise scrutinize his self interest in the polices he helped successfully engineer for the rest of us.
    ​ ​Gates used millions in grants to transform the once proudly unbridled The Guardian into his personal newsletter. With $250 million, he purchased immunity from criticism by news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde and the Center for Investigative Reporting…
    ​ ​The mainstream network news shows, including CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox have put COVID Terror, Vaccines Salvation and the obligatory shaming of dissidents on a 24-hour loop with each segment (and I use this term in every sense of the word) with pharmaceutical advertisements.
    ​ ​These outlets have turned their weekly talk shows into fawning hagiographies for Gates’ regular satellite tours in which credulous, obsequious Sunday morning talk show hosts lob softball medical questions to a billionaire with no public health training.
    ​ ​Nobody ever asks Gates or his mini-me, Tony Fauci, why they chose to spend tens of billions in taxpayer dollars on speculative vaccines and zero dollars investigating the many off-the-shelf, off-patent medications that have demonstrated extraordinary success in the hands of private doctors — medications that might have ended the pandemic a year ago.
    ​ ​The media, which has enabled this global hostage crisis, is arguably the most consequential criminal enterprise in human history. As Rahm Emmanuel observed, “never let a good crisis go to waste.”
    ​ ​Gates and Fauci have demonstrated that by controlling the media, billionaires and their government cronies can prolong a crisis forever and accumulate unprecedented wealth and power over humanity.

    Critics Must Be Silenced for Billionaires to Keep Profiting From Pandemic

    Tom sends this historical parallel about the threat to Roman oligarchs by a populist Tribune, Tiberius Gracchus (RIP).
    ​ ​Tiberius Gracchus was a Roman politician and official in the Second Century BC. Gracchus was a member of the populares, a faction that sided with the plebian – the common people – against the conservative aristocratic patricians who had traditionally held power in Rome. At the time of Gracchus the small independent farmers of the Roman Republic were increasingly feeling economic pressure from the concentration of public lands into giant estates held by aristocrats. Rome, a nation whose strength had also been built on a class of free, independent men was now increasingly owned and controlled by a strata of oligarchs.
    Tiberius Gracchus proposed reforms to break up the giant estates and redistribute the land to average Romans. He was vehemently opposed to the aristocrats and made no secret of his intention to destroy their power. He was aggressive. He was loud. He threatened the entire power structure of those who believed the Republic belonged to them.
    ​https://andmagazine.com/talk/2021/02/09/killing-the-republic-trump-as-tiberius-gracchus/

    Finally the answer to why Gardasil reactions are so inexplicably bad, an “unlisted” ingredient. (“Contamination” is such an ugly word.)​
    New Study: Gardasil HPV Vaccine Contains Chemical Used in Biological Warfare
    PMSF, a nerve agent, is used to manufacture HPV vaccines, but it is not supposed to be in the final product.
    However, new research documents its presence in Merck’s Gardasil and Gardasil 9 HPV vaccines.

    New Study: Gardasil HPV Vaccine Contains Chemical Used in Biological Warfare

    #70167
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    I used to perform music with some regularity at a local retirement community. That practice was, of course, suspended with the pandemic, and that retirement community has had no outside musicians perform in the last 11 months. Recently, the retirement community has had its entire staff and residents become vaccinated — the second course of vaccinations is nearly complete. I met with a friend and fellow musician from that community on Monday, and found out from him that the community is proposing to soon allow outside musicians again, as long as those musicians have been vaccinated.

    I currently have no intention of becoming vaccinated. I began to explain this to my friend who assured me, no problem, the retirement community could arrange for me to be vaccinated (since I am not slated for early vaccination due to my profession or age.) I continued my explanation that I currently have no intention of becoming vaccinated because I already had Covid, and therefore have natural immunity. (I’d be happy to provide a copy of my positive PCR test, and subsequent negative PCR test 11 days later — I do understand the concern of the administration of the retirement community.). Since we as yet have no real data on how long vaccine conferred immunity lasts, and insufficient data on how long natural immunity lasts, and cannot accurately compare the two, how can my natural immunity be viewed as any less valid than vaccine conferred immunity?

    I have been spared much of the lockdown insanity present in New England by living in Arizona, erstwhile home of the “Wild West.” Sure, some localities have public masking laws in place for indoor places (stores and such), and retirement communities have had to meet state guidelines, but most of the rest has been left up to local school districts and local businesses and churches to make their own decisions on how to operate in the midst of this pandemic thing.

    And yet, still, I am presented with a pernicious conundrum: do I submit to a foreign substance being unnecessarily being injected into my body so that I can return to my “normal” routine of performing music at this venue? How many other venues are going to place this requirement upon musicians? Is evidence of natural immunity to Covid even going to be allowed as an alternative to vaccination?

    #70169
    John Day
    Participant

    @Phoenixvoice:
    We don’t know the secret ingredients in any of the vaccines, or what the long term effects might be.
    Don’t risk it.
    Argue your natural-immunity case and they can discuss an exception for you.
    They like you, right?

    #70170

    These injections may well be the proverbial cliff your mother warned you not to jump off of with “everybody else”.

    #70171
    Dr. D
    Participant

    You probably saw the entire Federal Reserve System is down. Speaking of the system going down. Right. Now.

    So: printing $2T/quarter, immediately attack on GME that this tiny, meaningless stock is a threat to the whole system. Following attack on Silver, the Achillies Heel of the banks. Followed by a continuing BTC at $57,000. Followed by Yellen denials. Followed by Nigeria(?) giving up on USD and moving to BTC in central bank reserves. Followed by Interest Rates reversing and tripling. Followed by a un-advertised accident that takes out the anchor of the whole western banking system.

    I’m not a suspicious fellow, but after the dagger, the rope, the candlestick, and the lead pipe, I’m beginning to think somebody’s trying to kill Professor Plum in the Library. Now who would take out a tottering system that was about to collapse on itself anyway?

    Great reset indeed. Did they try ctrl-alt-del?

    #70172
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    @V.Arnold, from a few days ago.
    “Germ” is qualified to assess medical data.
    He studied pharmacology at university.

    Mine was a fair question; not an attack. For what reason couldn’t he have given me a fair answer?

    We don’t know the secret ingredients in any of the vaccines, or what the long term effects might be.
    Don’t risk it.

    Interesting advice; I agree. I do not trust the galoots ramrodding this herd…

    #70173
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Long term covid now has an official name:
    “But during a press conference Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, finally referred to it by an official name: PASC. “Many of you are now aware of what had long been called ‘long COVID’ but actually, what that really is is post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, which we’re now referring to as ‘PASC,'” Fauci said.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/long-term-effects-of-covid-19-given-name-by-experts-fauci-231226751.html

    #70174
    WES
    Participant

    Dr. D:

    Regarding Kagan and people “not” being willing to pay the price for empire. This happen to Britain after WW2!

    After WW2 ended Britain elected a new peace time Labour government, throwing out Churchill’s war time government. Since Britain was broke, a secret empire policy was devised by this new government to try and keep it’s empire.

    It left all the British troops, especially the airforce, stationed in Britain’s colonies in place, only demobilizing it’s European troops. The colonial troops were naturally not informed of this policy of course!

    It didn’t take long for the colonial troops to notice that they weren’t going home too. It wasn’t long before the conscripted citizen solders went on strike! The strike spread quickly to nearly all of Britain’s overseas military bases! The top brass called it a mutiny, arrested, and threatened to execute ring leaders, badly over playing their hand!

    Then supporting strikes started happening in Britain eventually forcing the new peace Labour government to back down and start bring the colonial troops home.

    After 6 long years of suffering to win WW2, the British people were in no mood to pay the price required to keep Britain’s empire! Shortly there after Britain granted independence to most of it’s colonies bring the mighty British empire to a sudden end!

    It was Kagan be dammed!

    #70175
    WES
    Participant

    I am not surprised by joe’s governments behavior.

    If you had just stolen the election wouldn’t you keep lots of troops on hand? Check.
    Since you know you are not the legitimate government wouldn’t you suppress all opposing voices? Check.
    Wouldn’t you try and exert maximum control over all aspects of society? Check.
    Wouldn’t you want total control of all forms of communications and media? Check.

    The beat goes on.

    It is only a matter of time before the people become disgruntled with joe.
    As things deteriorate the people will start blaming joe.
    Then the people might remember joe isn’t their legitimate president.
    Then joe becomes “not my president”!
    Oh, yes! Trump not my president!

    #70176
    WES
    Participant

    One of the top 10 companies John Day list, I believe controls the company that holds title to all of the US’s listed stocks!

    #70177
    Germ
    Participant

    @ V Arnold – I did not give you an answer simply because I had not yet seen your question.

    Now, what was is it again?

    #70179
    Germ
    Participant

    Not all vaccines are the same. For those who are in a situation where they are obliged to get a vaccine, choose wisely.

    And, yes, some folks are getting a choice:
    https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/24/which-vaccine-should-i-choose-serbia-gives-citizens-choice-of-four-coronavirus-jabs?minutetv=true

    Here, in Europe, travel will become very difficult without it:

    https://euobserver.com/political/151037

    https://www.healthpassportworldwide.com/

    https://murciatoday.com/galicia-introduces-fines-of-up-to-60000-euros-for-refusing-vaccination-as-part-of-anti_pandemic-legislation_1563611-a.html (poorly written, but you’ll get the idea)

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