Jun 072022
 
 June 7, 2022  Posted by at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Pablo Picasso Rest (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932

 

Zelensky Says Ukraine is Being Pushed to Make Concessions to Russia (Celente)
Blaming Putin Is Helping Putin (Dmitry Orlov)
Fury In Moscow After Air Closures Block Lavrov Trip To Serbia (AFP)
Your Show of Shows (Kunstler)
The White House Keeps Stoking Covid Fears (Bhattacharya)
COVID-19: Mask Mandates Could Increase Death Rate (Celente)
Florida Surgeon General Openly Questions Safety Of Covid-19 Vaccines (FP)
Elon Musk Threatens To Terminate Twitter Deal (PM)
Biden Admin Quietly Raised Amount of Ethanol Required in Gasoline (CTH)
Soros Spent $40 Million To Elect 75 ‘Social Justice’ Prosecutors (WE)
Exasperated Biden Has Only Himself To Blame For Poll Numbers (Levine)
Why Is Chuck Schumer Trying To Stop Antitrust Reform? (NW)
Ankara Tries To Sell ‘Ottoman Islands’ Theory (K.)
Nils Merzel’s New Book Argues Julian Assange Is Being Tortured (Conv.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nuclear warheads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1533811236160290817

 

 

“Zelensky did not specify exactly what parties are beginning to grow impatient..”

Zelensky Says Ukraine is Being Pushed to Make Concessions to Russia (Celente)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday told reporters that he is starting to feel pressure from the West to negotiate for peace with Russia from a current position of weakness. Ukrayinska Pravda reported that Zelensky told reporters: “I do not have any negotiations on any plans (on the peace plan, which is being discussed by the United States, the European Union and Britain – ed.); such negotiations are currently at zero. Everyone really wants to push us little by little towards some result that is definitely undesirable for us, because we have not been asked yet, but beneficial for other parties that have their own interests. Again, different: both financial and political. “Fatigue is growing, people want some kind of result for themselves, and you and I need a result – for us. Thus, I did not discuss with them the structures for resolving the issue of this war with a positive result for us.”

Zelensky did not specify exactly what parties are beginning to grow impatient with the war but some high-profile people have recently said that Ukraine should consider some kind of concessions to achieve peace. Zelensky and his closest advisers have been adamant that they will not cede one inch of the country to Russia, despite Russian forces and separatists now controlling about 20 percent of the country. Zelensky has said earlier that Russian troops must leave the country before there can be any talk of a negotiate peace, which many see as an unfeasible position. Last week, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, called Zelensky’s demand idiotic “and unfeasible in principle,” Newsweek reported.

“Anticipating his inevitable defeat, Ukrainian President Zelensky found a convenient way out of the impasse,” Medvedev said. “No country, no problem. His actions and statements prove that now he is ready to put almost everything on the altar of his political ambitions.”

Read more …

“The logical steps needed to make it all Putin’s fault are then obvious: the shortages are because of the war and the war is Putin’s fault.”

Blaming Putin Is Helping Putin (Dmitry Orlov)

The systemic crisis which we are currently witnessing in the West (and in other parts of the world that are too tightly interconnected with the West to avoid experiencing it as well) is objectively being caused by the West itself. But Westerners, being unaccustomed to acknowledging their mistakes (being all superior, indispensable and infallible-like in their own addled minds), are forced to resort to explaining away their epic failures in virtually every sphere by blaming it all on Putin. That is, they don’t even blame Russia in general, but blame Putin personally; after all, Russia can be good and agreeable at times (as it was under Gorbachev and Yeltsin) but Putin makes it misbehave. That’s why it’s all got to be Putin’s fault.

Here’s what it’s come to: an entire President of the United States (or whoever runs his teleprompter), who, in the course of his election campaign, swore up and down that he will take responsibility for whatever happens under his command, now blames “Putin’s Price Hike” so regularly and monotonously that the phrase has become a meme. By now the narrative of “it’s all Putin’s fault” has spread to encompass all of the more sensitive problems: inflation, fuel prices, food price hikes and even… shortages of baby formula! It turns out that the shortages aren’t caused by the discovery of dangerous bacteria in the products of a monopoly producer but by shortages of imported sunflower oil from… the Ukraine. That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, no less! The logical steps needed to make it all Putin’s fault are then obvious: the shortages are because of the war and the war is Putin’s fault.

This wonderful strategy works just fine for the short term, but it has a major vulnerability in the longer term because of a certain mechanism of mass psychology. Superficially, it is simple and seemingly bulletproof: Putin is irrational; he has imperial ambitions, suffers from paranoia, delusions of grandeur, is obsessed with restoring the USSR… Since his motives are irrational, they cannot be dealt with through rational means such as negotiation, diplomacy, compromise and so on. Putin is a crazy dictator with lots of nuclear missiles and so all we can do is suffer. This construct seems good enough for most purposes, such as explaining away social problems, economic issues and failures of leadership. But only in the short term.

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“This was a deprivation of a sovereign state of the right to carry out foreign policy.”

Fury In Moscow After Air Closures Block Lavrov Trip To Serbia (AFP)

Moscow on Monday furiously condemned the rejection by several European countries of a request for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s plane to pass through their airspace, forcing him to cancel a trip to ally Serbia. “The unthinkable has happened,” Lavrov told an online news conference in Moscow. “This was a deprivation of a sovereign state of the right to carry out foreign policy.” Bulgaria, Macedonia and Montenegro refused a request from Russia for Lavrov’s plane to pass through their airspaces on the way to Serbia because of sanctions imposed over Moscow’s military action in Ukraine. Lavrov had been due to hold talks with top officials in Belgrade, one of Moscow’s few remaining allies in Europe since the launch of the offensive in late February.

Lavrov described the move as “outrageous”, insisting that Moscow’s relations with Belgrade would not be “destroyed”. He said Moscow had invited his Serbian counterpart Nikola Selakovic to visit Russia in the near future instead. The Kremlin also denounced the moves, with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman calling them “hostile actions”. “We are convinced that such actions will not be able to prevent our country’s continuation of contacts, especially with friendly countries,” Dmitry Peskov told journalists. Lavrov had previously been forced to cancel a trip to Geneva for disarmament talks in late February, after the European Union closed its airspace to Russian aviation.

A Russian diplomatic source told news agency Interfax there had been no choice but to cancel the visit to Serbia. “Russian diplomacy has not yet learned how to teleport,” the source said. The chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian parliament’s upper house, Konstantin Kosachev, suggested NATO was pressuring the three countries. “We are talking about a NATO demarche, and without the United States it could not have happened,” Kosachev said on Telegram.

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“..as a final indignity — actually, an advertisement to the world of our depraved weakness — the US military is hosting drag queen shows at our European air bases.”

Your Show of Shows (Kunstler)

The Party of Chaos certainly doesn’t need to reinforce the mass formation psychosis of its base who maintain that the 2020 election was the fairest-and-squarest in US history. The committee members will chant the talismanic phrase “The Big Lie” ad nauseam to ward off reasonable suspicions that they are the ones doing the lying. Since a kind of maniacal stupidity attends all the party’s doings these days, it could easily backfire on them. Even two years later probes are still pending in several swing states, and only a few weeks ago, the documentary 2000 Mules released time-stamped videocam footage of blatant wholesale drop-box ballot-stuffing around the country. Lawsuits filed lately also claim the committee itself is illegally constituted, since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disallowed (against the rules) the minority Republicans from appointing their own chosen members.

Instead, she did it for them, planting the vehemently hostile rogues Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger on it, meaning no witnesses will be called who might refute pertinent details of the “insurrection” narrative already constructed. Much of the testimony presented will be videotaped interviews with Trump White House officials and there will be no accounting for what may be edited out. In other words, you have an obvious setup for a star chamber, a device for disregarding individual rights and fair procedure. The context, of course, as I aver above, is a country that is imploding six ways to Sunday — to paraphrase Chuck Schumer, the Party of Chaos’s Senate leader. At least half the public is already onto the extravagant damage inflicted upon our national life by the beneficiaries of the 2020 election.

Thanks to “Joe Biden,” the dollar is hemorrhaging value, we instigated a war in Ukraine that will lead to global famine and mass refugee events, oil and natgas are unaffordable thanks to our destabilizing of global distribution networks, spare parts are unavailable for every imaginable machine in the land, the business model for farming is broken, real estate is groaning under rising mortgage interest rates, the CDC is still pushing Covid vaccines despite proof that they are ineffective and harmful, cities are overwhelmed with criminal violence and psychotic homeless drug fiends, and, as a final indignity — actually, an advertisement to the world of our depraved weakness — the US military is hosting drag queen shows at our European air bases.

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“..in at least 35% of pediatric “Covid deaths,” Covid couldn’t have been the cause.”

The White House Keeps Stoking Covid Fears (Bhattacharya)

“I’ve been a huge advocate of keeping schools fully open to in person education since October of 2020,” Ashish Jha, the White House’s Covid response coordinator, tweeted last week. “Still am.” So why is Dr. Jha engaged in scare-mongering about the danger of Covid to children? In a May 30 tweet, Dr. Jha asserted that Covid is “a far greater threat to kids than the flu is.” He linked to an article by Harvard Medical School instructor Jeremy Faust, which claims that Covid killed more than 600 children in 2021, whereas the flu kills “an average” of only 120 children annually. But Dr. Faust’s data are severely skewed, for three reasons.

First, while flu is seldom tested, everyone admitted to a hospital for any reason gets a Covid test. Between October 2018 and September 2019, 1.4 million flu tests were reported to public-health and clinical labs. As of May 31, 2022, there had been 897 million PCR tests for Covid. Second, evidence from audits of death certificates found that 35% of all pediatric deaths in 2020 “had co-occurring diagnosis codes that could not be plausibly categorized as either a chain-of-event or significant contributing condition,” according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Put another way, in at least 35% of pediatric “Covid deaths,” Covid couldn’t have been the cause.

Third, Dr. Faust relies on a figure for confirmed flu deaths that is well-known to underestimate actual flu deaths by an order of magnitude. Correcting for the lack of flu testing, the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases estimated 1,161 pediatric flu deaths in the 2012-13 season rather than the 142 that Dr. Faust reported. For the White House to amplify a false message of high Covid risk for children undermines public health and erodes public confidence. It foments an erroneous assessment of risk and is the kind of misinformation that leads to more school closings as well as burdensome mask and quarantine mandates.

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“Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths..”

COVID-19: Mask Mandates Could Increase Death Rate (Celente)

A new study out of Kansas found that mask mandates could be associated with a higher rate of death due to the spread of COVID-19. The observational study, which was published in Medicine in February considered “whether mandatory mask use influenced the case fatality rate in Kansas” from August 2020 to October of the same year, Town Hall reported. Dr. Zacharias Fögen authored the observational study titled, “The Foegen Effect: A Mechanism by Which Facemasks Contribute to the COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate.” He wrote the main takeaway was that “contrary to the accepted thought that fewer people are dying due to infection rates are reduced by masks, this was not the case.”


“Results from this study strongly suggest that mask mandates actually caused about 1.5 times the number of deaths or 50% more deaths compared to no mask mandates,” the German doctor wrote. Fögen’s theory is that hypercondensed droplets caught by masks are re-inhaled and “introduced deeper into the respiratory tract.” The study focused on Kansas because the decision to force masks was up to the 105 counties and 81 refused to impose them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to insist that masks are an effective tool in preventing the spread of COVID-19. President Joe Biden has made mask usage one of the central themes in his administration’s fight against the virus. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order requiring masks on federal property and called for their widespread use for 100 days.

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“How can you force people to take a vaccine in order to stop transmission when that vaccine is not effective at stopping transmission?”

Florida Surgeon General Openly Questions Safety Of Covid-19 Vaccines (FP)

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Friday made some of his strongest statements yet against receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. Delivered at a press conference announcing an agreement with the Special Olympics to lift a vaccine mandate, the Florida Department of Health leader went much further. He called into question the efficacy of COVID-19 shots and whether they are even safe to use. “People will say oh, you know, millions of people have taken these vaccines, they must be safe,” he said. “Well, you can’t know the answer to that when it is taboo to talk about having a reaction after vaccines.” Citing only anecdotal evidence, he suggested the vaccine has produced more side effects than others such as flu shots.


“There’s another vaccine that over 100 million Americans take every year, and it’s the influenza vaccine,” he said. “And the stream of adverse events that I’ve heard from people all over this country after these vaccines is nothing like the years of my life when I’ve been in medicine and have been administering the influenza vaccines. There is a difference, and you can’t say that millions of people getting it excuses you from that.” Regarding vaccine mandates, he said those make no sense based on what science now shows about this coronavirus and about vaccines in use now. “Scientifically, it makes zero sense,” Ladapo said. “How can you force people to take a vaccine in order to stop transmission when that vaccine is not effective at stopping transmission?”

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“..Parag Agrawal, current CEO said that for Musk to undertake this count he would need access to information that is not currently public.”

You can buy this car, but you cannot look at the engine…

Elon Musk Threatens To Terminate Twitter Deal (PM)

Elon Musk has accused Twitter of “resisting and thwarting” his inquiries about how many fake, or bot accounts are currently on the Twitter platform. Musk has been trying to get this information since his acquisition process for the platform began. Musk has reportedly called Twitter’s unwillingness to provide the information a “clear material breach” to the terms of the agreement that is still under negotiation. As a result, Musk is reserving his right to not complete the transaction.In the letter to Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, Skadden attorney Mike Ringler for Musk said that “Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” according to CNBC.

He said further that Twitter must provide the information that is being requested, and that the merger agreement requires it. Ringler disputed Twitter’s claim that they are not responsible to give that data in order to close the deal. “Mr. Musk is entitled to seek, and Twitter is obligated to provide,” Ringler wrote, “information and data for, inter alia, ‘any reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transaction.'” “At this point,” Ringler continued, “Mr. Musk believes Twitter is transparently refusing to comply with its obligations under the merger agreement, which is causing further suspicion that the company is withholding the requested data due to concern for what Mr. Musk’s own analysis of that data will uncover.”

The letter, submitted to the SEC, posited that “If Twitter is confident in its publicized spam estimates, Mr. Musk does not understand the company’s reluctance to allow Mr. Musk to independently evaluate those estimates. As noted in our previous correspondence, Mr. Musk will of course comply with the restrictions provided under Section 6.4, including by ensuring that anyone reviewing the data is bound by a non-disclosure agreement, and Mr. Musk will not retain or otherwise use any competitively sensitive information if the transaction is not consummated.”

Musk has been adamant throughout the process that he needs to know how many of the accounts on Twitter are actual humans. There is speculation that if the number is higher than Twitter execs have reported, Musk could negotiate a new buying price that’s less than the $44 billion initially offered and agreed to. Musk and his team have been willing to do the calculations themselves, but Parag Agrawal, current CEO who took over after founder Jack Dorsey left in the fall, said that for Musk to undertake this count he would need access to information that is not currently public.

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From 10% to 15%. But small engines and older car engines cannot take more than 10%.

(bio-) Ethanol fulfills its promise as an unmitigated disaster.

But wait, didn’t we have a food problem?

Biden Admin Quietly Raised Amount of Ethanol Required in Gasoline (CTH)

Last Friday the Biden administration raised the mandatory amount of biofuel, specifically ethanol, that must be blended within the U.S. gasoline supply. The previous amount of 10% was raised to 15% by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This is likely to lead to two sets of bigger issues, less food and higher gas prices. First issue. – The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) is a government mandate, passed in 2005 and expanded in 2007, that requires growing volumes of biofuels to be blended into U.S. transportation fuels like gasoline and diesel every year. Approximately 40 percent of corn grown in the U.S. is used for ethanol. Raising the amount of ethanol required in gasoline will result in the need for more biofuel (corn). With farming costs and outputs already under pressure this could be problematic.

Second issue – The EPA enforces the biofuel standard by requiring refineries to submit purchase credits (known as Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs) to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proving the purchases. This enforcement requirement sets up a system where the RIN credits are bought and sold by small refineries who do not have the infrastructure to do the blending process. They purchase second-hand RIN credits from parties that blended or imported biofuels directly. This sets up a secondary income stream, a trading market for the larger oil companies, refineries and importers. The RIN credit trading platform is similar to what we might expect to see if the ‘Carbon Trading’ scheme was ever put into place. However, now that the biofuel requirements for blended gasoline have gone from 10% to 15%, the price of the RIN credits will likely jump.

This will cost refineries billions in additional expenses,…. which will mean the cost of the gasoline from the refineries will increase,….. which will mean the cost of the gasoline at the pump will go higher. The EPA theory is that RIN credits should be expensive thereby forcing all oil refineries to invest in infrastructure that makes the blended fuel. All of the infrastructure from the refinery to the gas station would need to be modified to facilitate the new 15% RFS standard. Again, higher prices at the pumps as a result of oil companies and refineries needing to spend billions on upgrades. Which brings us to issue number three.

Third Issue – “Ethanol is a valuable source of octane in finished gasoline, but it is chemically different than petroleum gasoline and cannot be used in concentrations above 10 percent in small engines — like outboard boat motors, motorcycles, lawnmowers, generators or chain saws — or in any cars made before 2001. Complicating matters further, most cars on the road today still aren’t warrantied to run on gasoline with more than 10 percent ethanol. Retail stations also must have compatible infrastructure in order to sell gasoline with higher ethanol blends.” This issue is known within the industry as “The Blend Wall.”

Read more …

America’s future is being shaped by a foreigner who will not see that future.

Soros Spent $40 Million To Elect 75 ‘Social Justice’ Prosecutors (WE)

Sky-high campaign donations from liberal anti-police billionaire George Soros and his groups have helped to elect 75 “social justice” prosecutors in whose cities jailings have plummeted and crime has surged, according to a new report provided to Secrets. In a 17-page report compiled by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a decade of spending has put Soros prosecutors in enough big cities that they represent 1 in 5 people, or about 72 million. That includes about half of America’s 50 most populous cities and counties where 40% of U.S. homicides occur. Soros is a well-known proponent of social justice prosecution, which calls for lighter sentences, especially of minorities. The movement, however, has led to higher crime in some cities and has been decried by pro-law-and-order conservatives.


Police have led the charge against liberal prosecutors who have been refusing to file charges that lead to long prison sentences. In a statement to Secrets, LELDF President Jason Johnson hit the Soros funding. “Soros is using that campaign money and the hundreds of millions more for supporting organizations to quietly transform the criminal justice system for the worse, promoting dangerous policies and anti-police narratives to advance his radical agenda,” said Johnson. He added, “Over the past decade, George Soros has spent $40 million to elect 75 of his chosen prosecutors. In campaigns from Houston and Los Angeles to Philadelphia and Orlando, Soros was the campaign’s biggest spender by far — as much as 90% of the dollars spent in some races. Soros isn’t done yet — he’s already spent another million so far this year on his hand-picked district attorneys.”

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“Let Joe be Joe” is the thinking.”

Exasperated Biden Has Only Himself To Blame For Poll Numbers (Levine)

Leaks from the White House suggest that Joe Biden is in a snit over his plummeting poll numbers, now that they’ve sunk below those of Donald Trump. He is exasperated that he is not receiving credit for the great achievements of his administration and feels he is a victim of circumstances beyond his control: inflation, rising fuel prices, the border crisis, Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, school shootings, COVID-19, and so on. Oh, woe is him. So goes the spin. Biden’s solution is to snarl at staff and demand better messaging. First lady Jill Biden and the president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, are reported by Politico to be urging him to get out and about more. “Let Joe be Joe” is the thinking.

But isn’t that part of the problem? When Biden goes off script in front of a teleprompter, things go awry very quickly. He blurts out reckless thought bubbles, like when he said Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” or that the US would get involved militarily in Taiwan. The plan is to put the near-octogenarian president on the road to give him more opportunities to connect organically with people and talk up his accomplishments. Perhaps in a sign that he is upping the tempo of his lethargic work output, Biden cut short his weekend sojourn at his Delaware beach house earlier than usual, returning to the White House Sunday rather than Monday morning. But the subtext of the leaks of turmoil in the Oval points to one central grievance: Donald Trump.

The man whose legacy Biden has spent his entire presidency trying to erase just can’t be outstripped. It’s why Biden can’t mention his predecessor’s name, treating him more like Lord Voldemort than a former president. He is “seething,” reports Politico, that his standing in the polls is now worse than that of Trump, “whom Biden routinely refers to in private as ‘the worst president’ in history and an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.” What does that say about his own presidency? Biden’s Trump derangement is “the greatest source of West Wing frustration, coming from behind the Resolute Desk.” Well, no wonder. When you look at the polling comparison between Biden and Trump, there simply is no contest. There is not a single day in which Biden has done better than Trump in his second year in office.

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Money?!

Why Is Chuck Schumer Trying To Stop Antitrust Reform? (NW)

We’re all familiar with the concentrated market power of giant technology companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, which reach into all corners of Americans’ daily lives. For more than a decade, their monopolistic dominance has spawned Justice Department investigations, congressional hearings, civil lawsuits and legal penalties. Over and over again, antitrust bills are discussed and some are introduced—and then they die in the House and the Senate. Now, though, two bills that would begin to rein in the power of companies like these Big Tech behemoths are under consideration in the Senate. They’ve both passed the Senate Judiciary Committee by impressive margins and are ready for a full vote. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been dragging his feet on bringing them to the floor.

Letting these bills die would be a significant failure of the American antitrust movement, signaling to the Big Tech companies that even modest and highly limited restrictions on their behavior are politically impossible to achieve—that despite overwhelming popular support for reform, Washington is simply too intransigent and too bought and paid for to get anything done. A defeat would give these companies the green light to continue stomping all over their smaller competitors and harming consumers by invading our privacy and limiting our choice. But given Schumer’s own ties to Big Tech, his reluctance to bring this legislation to the floor—where it would almost certainly pass—is no surprise.

Schumer has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Tech and its employees over the past decade. Between 2013 and 2018—a time period when tough data protections were adopted in the European Union, and there were broad calls for the U.S. to do the same—these corporate giants gave Schumer more than almost any other member of Congress. In 2016, the technology industry gave Schumer $237,000. In just the spring of 2021, when antitrust legislation was under discussion in Congress, Schumer took $120,000 from Google and Apple executives and their aligned PACs. The ties go beyond campaign contributions. Schumer’s staff has been a revolving door for Big Tech. According to the New York Post, more than 80 former Schumer staffers have gone on to subsequently work at the Big Tech firms.

And Schumer’s two daughters have also both worked directly for Big Tech—one for Amazon, and one for Facebook subsidiary Instagram. Alison Schumer also advocated against regulation as a public affairs manager for Airbnb, the technology company that has in many ways distorted housing markets worldwide. Given all that money and those family connections, it’s no wonder that Schumer has been reluctant to take a hard line on the enormous problem of tech market concentration. Indeed, journalists who watch the sector have called Schumer a “quiet but reliable Washington ally” to Big Tech, as well as a “tech booster.” As recently as 2018, he said tech companies were too new to regulate aggressively. He proposed that the companies police themselves—an approach that has clearly failed.

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Lausanne Treaty, 1923. Yes, Turkey is smaller than the Ottoman empire. This is turning into a weird revisionist story.

Ankara Tries To Sell ‘Ottoman Islands’ Theory (K.)

The theory of “Ottoman islands” whose sovereignty has not been given to any country by any treaty is being pushed by Ankara in earnest. Indicatively, the idea has also been picked up and promoted by the Turkish media, targeting specific islands, such as Agathonisi and Farmakonisi. The pro-government Milliyet columnist and director of the Kanal D television network in Ankara, Zafer Sahin, said in an article that “a second Imia crisis is on the brink. This is because the situation has turned into a deep political and military crisis that goes beyond the Imia issue.” Greece and Turkey came close to war in 1996 over the rocky Imia islets.

In his article titled “The Ottoman Islands in the Aegean,” Sahin emphasized that Ankara, in addition to questioning the sovereignty of the eastern Aegean islands that are militarized, is also preparing to raise the issue of the sovereignty of islands whose sovereignty has not been determined, citing Gavdos as an example. “This is located south of Crete and is under a regime whose sovereignty has not been determined,” he said. Turkey has long promulgated theory of “gray zones” regarding the status of 152 Greek islands and islets, but it seems that now there is an attempt to connect them with the Ottoman Empire.

“There are Ottoman islands that have not been transferred to the maps of the US and Great Britain, issued after the Second World War, which appear outside Greek territory,” Sahin claims. These theories began to emerge after the statements of Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu last week, who tried to threaten Greece into demilitarizing these islands. “Otherwise, the debate over sovereignty begins as they have been given [to Greece] under conditions,” he said.

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Not a word so far from the new Oz PM.

Nils Merzel’s New Book Argues Julian Assange Is Being Tortured (Conv.)

It is easy to forget why Julian Assange has been on trial in England for, well, seemingly forever. Didn’t he allegedly sexually assault two women in Sweden? Isn’t that why he holed up for years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid facing charges? When the bobbies finally dragged him out of the embassy, didn’t his dishevelled appearance confirm all those stories about his lousy personal hygiene? Didn’t he persuade Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning to hack into the United States military’s computers to reveal national security matters that endangered the lives of American soldiers and intelligence agents? He says he is a journalist, but hasn’t the New York Times made it clear he is just a “source” and not a publisher entitled to first amendment protection? If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you are not alone. But the answers are actually no.

At very least, it’s more complicated than that. To take one example, the reason Assange was dishevelled was that staff in the Ecuadorian embassy had confiscated his shaving gear three months before to ensure his appearance matched his stereotype when the arrest took place. That is one of the findings of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, whose investigation of the case against Assange has been laid out in forensic detail in The Trial of Julian Assange.What is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture doing investigating the Assange case, you might ask? So did Melzer when Assange’s lawyers first approached him in 2018: “I had more important things to do: I had to take care of “real” torture victims!” Melzer returned to a report he was writing about overcoming prejudice and self-deception when dealing with official corruption. “Not until a few months later,” he writes, “would I realise the striking irony of this situation.”

[..] He received nothing like full co-operation in investigating Assange’s case. He gathered around 10,000 pages of procedural files, but a lot of them came from leaks to journalists or from freedom-of-information requests. Many pages had been redacted. Rephrasing Carl Von Clausewitz’s maxim, Melzer wrote his book as “the continuation of diplomacy by other means”. What he finds is stark and disturbing: “The Assange case is the story of a man who is being persecuted and abused for exposing the dirty secrets of the powerful, including war crimes, torture and corruption. It is a story of deliberate judicial arbitrariness in Western democracies that are otherwise keen to present themselves as exemplary in the area of human rights.

“It is the story of wilful collusion by intelligence services behind the back of national parliaments and the general public. It is a story of manipulated and manipulative reporting in the mainstream media for the purpose of deliberately isolating, demonizing, and destroying a particular individual. It is the story of a man who has been scapegoated by all of us for our own societal failures to address government corruption and state-sanctioned crimes.”

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Rubik
https://twitter.com/i/status/1533888946723340288

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle June 7 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 55 total)
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  • #109196

    Pablo Picasso Rest (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932   • Zelensky Says Ukraine is Being Pushed to Make Concessions to Russia (Celente) • Blaming Putin
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 7 2022]

    #109197
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Pablo Picasso Rest (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932

    I like this Picasso…
    It’s rather primative (her lips) but otherwise enjoyable……..
    …sorry I can’t offer more but that’s the limit of my understanding… 😉

    #109198
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    This is wild — Angel Alvarado (19 years old) set a world record by solving 3 Rubik’s cubes in just 4 minutes and 31 seconds…while juggling.

    The Rubic savant is truly amazing…hopefully he’s not a one trick pony…

    #109199
    Dr. D
    Participant

    How’s the failure of Keynesianism going today? Don’t you know it’s impossible to have high prices and a terrible economy? High prices are only caused by Joe’s overheating, red-hot supereconomy. Therefore, the solutions are only to crash the economy to slow down how good, awesome, and employed it is.

    And they have dual mandate: Stable prices (i.e. not 2% a year) and full employment. How they doin’? And the Constitution gives control of the whole Economy to what branch of government? What? None? To the people? No legal authority at all???

    And about intentionally killing everyone, Joe doubles up on energy zero fertilizer waste called “Ethanol”. Yes that’s right, IF it actually creates BTUs, and that’s debatable, it definitely consumes fertilizer and raises food prices. It causes Arab Springs. Let’s do MOAR!

    Also heard that the FDA formula plant was really a shortage of sunflower oil from Ukraine. I’m not sure failing utterly for American infants looks any better for being a bureaucratic nightmare that can’t get out of its own way, OR a war-mongering maniac that didn’t bother to make any plans, but one of the two protects the weapons manufacturers.

    “US Moves to Seize 2 Luxury Jets from Roman Abramovich Valued North of $400 Million”

    The broke U.S. just pirates and steals stuff now. Gold. Oil. Planes. Citizens.

    “J6 Committee Dems Hire TV Exec to Literally ‘Produce’ Hearings”

    Same as ever, just more honest about it. Like when all CIA agents and directors are just CNN/NBC anchors now.

    “WaPo Suspends David Weigel after Sexist Retweet Caused Public Spat”

    Telling boring jokes: Suspension. Being editor Taylor Lorenz who wrote a story so false they stealth edited it (a top ethics violation) then STILL had to do retractions and corrections on every other paragraph, found out in public and lambasted internet-wide? Nope. WaPo stands solidly behind her. I mean, she’s a rich, entitled, pathological liar and Swiss private school kid. They look out for their own.

    But like I said: thank God for free speech, thank God for being open about it now. WaPo lies, with every sentence of every paragraph. When caught, they lie again, play the victim, and blame the readers. Also her subject was g-d bananas: it was that anyone who covered the Johnny Depp trial were “Radicalized”. …Because…being…online? Is equal to being a violent right-wing radical? Because…looking at courtrooms…is right wing? Believing in the existence of law…is Right wing now? Nobody knows. Her paradigm, and therefore her words, are just a melting morass and make no sense.

    Partisan warning.
    And I ran into brain-melting morass, on that story about UN “Societal Collapse” (none of which terms they can define), there’s a Reddit:
    https://old.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/v0xbah/what_do_you_think_of_the_united_nations_report/

    It’s hilarious, jaw dropping, disturbing, familiar, alien, pointless, and compelling as a train wreck. Obviously, being Reddit, the key is pure hate, for human beings and anyone against “The Latest Thing”, anyone named in the last “5 Minutes of Hate.” I mean, literal quote: “the power hungry you speak of (think Trump, Putin, more recently Musk) thrive on taking your attention away from what really matters.”

    Is that not just stellar??? Exactly as demanded to hate, exactly in order, and exactly adding the one added to the new “5 Minutes of Hate” rotation last month. This person then goes on to warn about how we need to be “discerning” about the Media, and not believe everything we read. …You know, not like those “other guys”. (Republicans. All of which are ignorant extremists and ended the world on Jan 6.) Okey-dokie, then, I’m sure we’re getting a lot done on that there Climate Change and Societal Collapse front. “the key is engaging with the world in ways that are genuine to their hearts, and not how social media is telling you to do it (ie: clapping for first responders, buying from X Megacorp on Y day to “support Ukraine”) says the person who believes everything told them by the self-same “social media”.

    If I were an elite, I’d put it on loop and giggle myself to sleep every night. Awesome!!

    Who else do we hate, because hate helps? Reagan. Nixon. Christians. (Of course! The mostest!) Children, of course (we’re saving them by not having any) And all humanity. I hope they die! Who’s the bestest? Love fest? Sir Fauci!

    So: elite, set this up, go eat lobster on a yacht. These knuckleheads will kill everybody for you. All humanity, and naturally at least 1/3 that’s the “other side” PLUS the 1/3 that are “dumb” ordinary people. Bourgeois – spit – and all corporations that make things that humans use to live. So they kill 2/3rds – everyone that’s “Not them”, all energy that humans use to survive, all products humans use to survive, and all agriculture, law, culture, and societal norms humans use to survive. “Radical Change.” Don’t forget they’re the good guys! They care!

    So: conflicts? You have to save the planet? Or the people. That you hate. People who they say can’t be saved, so who cares? Except they need your absolute compliance. That you won’t give anyway. So everyone is going to die. Which is good. Except we need to stop it. Or rather “They” need to stop it. We’ll just tell “Them” what to do. And when they the billionaires don’t do it, “Reeeeee!” And they won’t. Because Nike, Gates, Facebook, Bezos, are all Republicans. Directed by Reagan. Or something.

    “Round and Round.” –Ratt “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”. I guess if your paradigm is self-contradictory, you’ll probably defeat yourself. Nothing to worry about here.

    Parting comment? “Things are going to go to hell and we are all going to die in a few years if you all do not give billions of of dollars to “insert current thing here.” Been hearing that in one form or another for 60 years.” “Insert current thing” is money and power to the same billionaire capitalists and corporations they’re warning about, which have the same agenda each and every time, with every new emergency reported by the same “social media” we need to use discernment about.

    “I Support the Current Thing” makes even more sense now. And why it has to be a new thing, over and over.

    How many listed hoaxes are believed? All of them, as far as I can tell. 100%. It’s just like believing animals boarded the ark 2-by-2 and the earth was made in 7 days. Religions require belief. Go out in the street and ask them. 100%.

    Nuclear arsenal, it’s about the number, the technology, type, accuracy, and use are very relevant. Also probably lies. I bet we have battlefield nukes unlisted and so do they.

    “Zelensky did not specify exactly what parties are beginning to grow impatient with the war but some high-profile people have recently said”

    Reporting: Ze gives no facts, no evidence, and neither will we. No names, no facts, no quotes. “Just (anything but) the facts, ma’am.” Evidence-free. All emotional suggestion and framing then? I mean, if you’re providing zero on “Who, What, Where, When, and Why” then what words are you using to fill columns? That’s right: emotion and innuendo.

    “Fury In Moscow after Air Closures Block Lavrov Trip to Serbia (AFP)”

    The U.S., not an empire, now claims jurisdiction over all airplane flights, all citizens worldwide, all financial transactions, all law, all commerce, and all oil. Yup, I’m sure we can keep that up and nothing bad will happen.

    But there’s no “One-world” government or nothing. Having one government claim and actually enforce their will over the planet is a conspiracy theory.

    “the US military is hosting drag queen shows at our European air bases.”

    Yes, and back home the same people are saying you are legally required to sleep with them. If not, it’s a crime, they’ll have their idiot-bully government arrest you. After all the years of watching this expand, you think I’m kidding? HereLetMeGoogleThatForYou.com

    “The White House Keeps Stoking Covid Fears (Bhattacharya)”

    Yeah, well, it’s the White House, Harvard, CDC, so there’s no Science. They get everything totally wrong and there are no consequences. YOU get the consequences. They’re just rich, inbred, trust-fund kids. Consequences are beneath them. You see the pet-poodle SEC on this? They used my money to make an ad mocking the Reddit investors who nuked insider Hedge Fund shorts by 50% and threw cream pies in their face on TV. Literally, that’s the ad. So “You kids aren’t allowed to win against our billionaire insider hedge-fund experts! You’re required to lose!!!” And so the SEC demands they stop playing, so their inbred trust-fund golfing pals can win again. A-Mazing. Keep talking. You completely discredit yourself with the truth.

    “How can you force people to take a vaccine in order to stop transmission when that vaccine is not effective at stopping transmission?”

    Easy: Total lack of Science. Total lack of Law. Total lack of reason. Everyone just complies to laws that were never passed and Science whose results have never been completed or published. So who’s to blame? If you don’t say no, is it rape?

    “Elon Musk Threatens to Terminate Twitter Deal (PM)”

    Twitter refuses to give even small and cursory information. That’s how you know they’re innocent. Innocent people selling you something always refuse all requests and stonewall all information.

    Note, either breach is $1B loss, or at least a lawsuit. So Twitter could also cease to exist. Since the rats are what’s holding Twitter together, you can’t purge them without sinking the ship. Rats holding hands is the only thing keeping the ship afloat. I don’t care either way as long as their transparent fraud remains in the news, being discredited.

    America’s future is being shaped by a foreigner who will not see that future.”

    Not only that, no one cares. To mention it at all makes you a “Nationalist.” And if you’re Larry Elder, a “White Nationalist”. What was that about no logic, no truth, no law? Yeah, stop playing with them as if they actually matter. If every word they say is a lie, and take every advantage legal or illegal, well, there you are.

    “We’re all familiar with the concentrated market power of giant technology companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon,”

    All these naughty “Capitalists” are Republicans directed by Reagan. And Schumer does all their bidding. Wait! …That’s odd. How does that fit into the narrative? Nevermind! We don’t use logic anyway! Life is so freeeeeeeeeeing!!! No rulz. No genderz. No lawz. Only a world where I am always right. And when I’m wrong, I just say I wasn’t, I never said that, and you’re a Nazi.

    “Ankara Tries to Sell ‘Ottoman Islands’ Theory (K.)”

    Practically all borders in the Old World are like this. But practically, you can’t do it or the concept of borders and nations dissolves.

    So, they’re at new shooting every day now. Somebody want to tell me how this can happen? Four years with almost nothing, now one every day? And the FBI knows almost all of the shooters so far?

    It sure isn’t for gun laws, since the argument is that nobody needs a gun when the police will protect you. Which the police haven’t for any of the shootings. Is it for local police failure? Well why would I think Federalized police would show up any quicker? “When seconds count, the police are 10 minutes — or an hour and ten minutes — away.”

    Nevermind: Sense. They makes none.

    Not making sense is the POINT. THAT is the #Winning. Ignore them.

    #109200
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    Am now struck by the image of a wooden barrel leaking at many points among the staves, and instead of barrel rings made by a smithy, we have two or three rings of rats holding hands, barely keeping it “together”.

    Whack-a-mole writ large.

    And as Lira and Bernhard say/write, eventually some of those rats will be forced to let go as their citizens rise up in cold and hunger and anger. Imagine the pressures being exerted on this rain-of-rats, from both directions…

    At out local “Tier 1, land-grant research university”, Greystar and others from Wall Street are building literally cities of apartments… renting from $1000 to $1600 per BEDROOM per month. Sources say occupancy was 60% last semester… this will be interesting to watch.

    #109203
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    An older article by Dmitry (“I’m a writer not a hockey star!”) Orlov in which his genius for analysis that reveals a situation’s fundamental factors, his hilarious if brutal sense of humor, and some kind of black streak in his soul that reminds me of Rod Steiger in that ancient movie, “Dr. Zhivago”:

    The Flight of the Headless Chicken

    “Clay! Clay!”

    #109204
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    Producing any assertion or “serious” analysis about Joe Biden (the actual Joseph Robinette, not the puppet masters handling him) and his deeds and ways is even more ludicrous than the man himself.

    #109205
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    The best proof that even the more “rational” people are deeply superstitious is the deeply entrenched belief that the behaviors, procedures, methods and thought processes which brought us into this mess will somehow get us out of it.

    As always has been the case, the current mess will inflate, reach a peak and then subside, regardless of any individual or collective “volition”.

    Very few are able to detach themselves from the hysteria & depression considered to be de rigueur in such occasions – my salute to them.

    #109206
    zerosum
    Participant

    ( First, Zelensky wants his 10% )
    …. peace …. beneficial for other parties that have their own interests.

    ———–
    Cannot use “regular gas” must buy the more expensive “super gas”
    “The Blend Wall.”
    https://assets.greentechmedia.com/assets/content/cache/made/assets/content/cache/remote/https_assets.greentechmedia.com/content/images/articles/-1_1_721_420_80_s_c1.jpg
    “Ethanol is a valuable source of octane in finished gasoline, but it is chemically different than petroleum gasoline and cannot be used in concentrations above 10 percent in small engines — like outboard boat motors, motorcycles, lawnmowers, generators or chain saws

    #109207
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    As always has been the case, the current mess will inflate, reach a peak and then subside, regardless of any individual or collective “volition”. (Just how many humans will remain in the aftermath and, if any, how will they recouple & reorganize is another issue altogether, one that, to be tackled in a serious fashion, needs to consider a profound shift in the ways humans behave – that shift is the underlying motif of my comments.)

    #109208
    zerosum
    Participant

    Breaking news
    I can’t find it …. yet
    Look for attack
    Look for Trudeau’s attack in response

    CBC news live – Candice Bergen, leader of Conservative Party, Canadian Politics

    #109209
    Fattigmann
    Participant

    Orlov is not to be trusted. He lived in metro Boston and thinks he understands America. He doesn’t. He lived on a houseboat before decamping to St. Petersburg; thinks he understands Russia. He doesn’t–the definition of rootless and disconnected. Always willing to point out the shortcomings of the US. Less willing to explain how a rich country encompassing 12 time zones has an annual average salaries at a fraction of the West. There are reasons. This engineer thinks highly of his own intellect but fails to see how economic engineers ruined his country in the 20th century. Take him with a grain of salt.

    #109210
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Markets, the real war: Dow now fully rolled over, tested upward many times, increasing failure with increasing speed. And this is the BEST index. S&P has more stocks and harder to rig, when Russell never came up at all.

    Interest rates, Market news says “Holding steady”. I guess that’s one way to look at it, but really it’s up 300%, built a flag formation at half mast for another doubling to 6% or more. Powell “raising” (mostly just pretending as he’s 2,000 bp behind) would seem to support this.

    Oh, and midterm season, new TV series debuting, Jan 6 vs Durham riding 2,000 Mules.

    #109211
    teri
    Participant

    On that damned ethanol additive: It doesn’t just damage small engines like lawnmowers, it damages car engines. The manual for my ’12 Civic warns that using above 10 % ethanol will degrade parts of the engine rapidly and using anything more than 10% will nullify the engine’s warranty. (Not that a warranty is still in effect in my car’s particular case, but the point is obvious.). Furthermore, ethanol reduces gas efficiency – you get at least 10% fewer miles per gallon with gas that has ethanol added to it.

    So they sell you a product diluted with corn oil that “costs less”, but you have to buy more of it to go the same miles (thereby nullifying the “costs less” mantra) and it ruins your engine.

    #109212
    Nemo
    Participant

    afaict, the WaPo “scandal” is just them launching another one of their deceitful political games.

    #109213
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Ethanol damage can supposedly be prevented by using an “Ethanol Fuel Treatment & Stabilizer”, for example:

    “Designed to reduce the excess water and further absorption of water into your petrol tank that ethanol can cause… It guards against ethanol damage”

    #109214
    John Day
    Participant
    #109215
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    China buzzing Taiwan is not a show of force against Taiwan, of course, but against the United States. So why would China want to display a show of force against the United States? Ordinarily one rattles the saber to remind a suspected attacker that one is armed and will fight back and win. So China suspects an attack from the United States, with enough certainty of that suspicion that they believe it warrants an overt public display of willingness and ability to fight back. China doesn’t want to fight. If they did then they would just do it. They want to stop the fight that we’re picking with them. In other words, Ji (and company) is telling Joe (and theatrical troupe) that China will go to war (and win) if the United States tries to “take” Taiwan to any further degree than it already has. Neither empire really gives a damn how the people of Taiwan feel about any of it.

    #109216

    Since the Jan 6 circus will start Thursday, please remind me: not one single gun was found on any of the participants, right? Not a shot was fired, other than the one from the “other side” that killed Ashli Babbit .

    But there are people who have spent the past 17 months in high security isolation and are now threatened with life in prison anyway?

    Maybe in 1021 you could overthrow a government with beanstalks and witches and town criers, but today? I simply do not get it.

    #109217
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @ArmenioPereira wrote : ” the current mess will inflate, reach a peak and then subside, regardless of any individual or collective “volition”. ”

    How does it inflate without ( “regardless of” ) volition? That’s like saying an object can be moved without being acted upon by a force.

    #109218
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Ethanol 15%…lovely. Yet one more “tax” on po’ folks…engine failure for their old and non-electric vehicles or the purchase of an anti-ethanol addictive for every tank of gas: as if gas at $5.30/gallon wasn’t enough. It now costs around round-trip $12 to drive the family across the valley to visit my parents. If this keeps up, it may eventually cost less to take public transportation than to use the gasoline, even if multiple people are traveling.

    Jan. 6…
    So far, whenever I’ve broached the subject with people who are squarely “on the left,” they are hypnotized into the belief that it was an actual “insurrection” and they have a visceral, emotional reaction towards me when I muse that perhaps “insurrection” is not the most apt term to describe what took place. A similar thing happens when I suggest that Russia had some good reasons for invading Ukraine, I.e. support of the people in the Donbas region. It is bizarre.

    I wonder…
    Did the same sort of thing happen in Nazi Germany if someone suggested perhaps that Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals were not the cause of Germany’s woes?

    #109219
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “The CDC raised its alert level for monkeypox to level 2 on Monday, recommending that travelers wear masks, among other health measures. While not on the level of COVID-19…” –Yahoo

    I laughed. “While the sun and my penis are not on the same size level…” Level 2, CDC? Really? For 30 cases?

    Yes. If Pfizer calls, you just go ahead and do whatever they say. They run the country now.

    First Yahoo comments, going all the way down?

    “I am not being sarcastic when I ask how we even take the CDC seriously anymore? in the 50 years of being alive, masks have never been a thing. Now its the CDC’s answer to everything.”

    “Well done, CDC! Didn’t take long for a new fear-mongering campaign. I guess with all the diseases that are out there that have been there since the beginning of time, you’re probably going to be recommending masks going forward. Interesting how pre-COVID everyone travelled without fear of catching …See more

    CDC is just mad because they didn’t get their way recently with Covid masking. They are determined to mask us somehow, even if it means magnifying the risk of a generally non-lethal disease.

    “21 cases and we all need to wear masks to travel–the CDC has an over inflated sense of their own self-worth.

    “If I am not mistaken you need direct contact with bodily fluids to catch Monkeypox so what are masks going to do besides make some people feel better?

    “OP you are trying to use logic to justify CDC recommendation… and the problem is that logic has left the building in 2020.”

    “cdc can take their recommendation and go pound sand with it. Been designing and selling respiratory gear for all kinds of deadly environments for 30 years and these masks do nothing to stop any viruses, dimensionally and physically impossible. A fitted half mask, full face mask, or if its really d…See more”

    “Since when is TWENTY ONE cases of ANYTHING declared as an “outbreak”?? Seriously! Especially considering those 21 cases are spread across an entire nation as large as the USA. This is ALL about control and the WHO/CDC’s unwillingness to give it back in a post-COVID world.”

    “Wearing masks is the CDC’s answer for everything. We allowed this from our gov. Every year going forward we’ll have some new version of the flu or whatever to make people live in fear.”

    “they are absolutely obsessed with putting masks on us.” [No, on vote mules]

    “Wear masks? Monkey pox is transmitted through bodily fluid. It is not airborn.”

    The CDC is an absolute joke, desperately trying to remain relevant while knowing they are no longer trusted.”

    Why didn’t the CDC just ban Africans?

    Don’t worry! Taylor Lorenz will claim to have called all 330M Americans and report they are all wearing masks and are scared of monkeypox. …Until 5pm when WaPo retracts the article again.

    Not enough? CDC also recommends we don’t eat meat. From wild African animals. I think I’m covered.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freshman_(1990_film)

    #109220
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Point being: I think the CDC has lost the plot, despite how much chaff they throw on unwatched CNN, or how many bots they hire on Twitter. Only Congressmen are dumb enough to be fooled.

    #109221

    “Barnestormer”s comment from over at the conservative treehouse:

    “There is no EPA mandate requiring 15% ethanol-blended gas.

    I believe that misapprehension may well be the result of the blending…of two news stories:

    1. The period during which E85 (15% ethanol gas) may be sold has been extended through the summer. (Its sale had previously been restricted during the hottest months over pollution concerns.)

    2. On Fri., June 3, the EPA did issue a mandate around the number “15,”–but it was in billions of gallons, not the % of ethanol that must be blended into gas.

    Under the RFS, EPA sets certain annual total amounts of biofuels that must be added to gas; it does not mandate the blend ratio.

    Borrowing from an old law professor’s phrase: the author’s inductive leap from gallons to per cent was a bit too long.”

    Hope he’s right. The small engine bit is particularly important to those of us with lawnmowers and outboards.

    #109222
    Rototillerman
    Participant

    Neither the Lucas additive nor Sta-Bil address the key issue with ethanol as a fuel component: ethanol is a solvent, and higher concentrations are incompatible with seals, hoses, and fuel system components that aren’t specifically designed for the higher ethanol concentration. Those additives are for another purpose: ethanol is hygroscopic (attracts and holds water moisture absorbed from the air), and those additives reduce the likelihood of rust and corrosion from that problem.

    #109223
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks for the further elucidation, Rototillerman.

    @My parents said know: I hope this assesment is correct, but it should have been clarified by now.
    The “15% ethanol in regular gas all summer” interpretation is pervasive.

    #109224
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    @D Benton Smith

    Do your body change by your own volition? Or regardless?

    Oswald Spengler postulated that civilizations are akin to organisms, I take this idea a step further by saying that events are also akin to organisms.

    #109225
    willem
    Participant

    If you’re not tired and disgusted enough by all the articles trying to persuade you that myocarditis is due to all kinds of different things that have always been around but that you never noticed; that it is perfectly normal for school-age kids to have heart attacks; that professional athletes keeling over mid-game is not unusual, that fake food, GMOs and lab meat are really good for you, you’ll love this one:

    https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-find-that-eating-a-certain-protein-is-related-to-developing-depression/

    And (of course!), this “certain protein” comes from all the stuff you probably thought was good for you:

    Newly released research confirms the link between a certain amino acid called proline and depression. Proline is a nonessential amino acid and is found in grass-fed beef, pasture-raised chicken, gelatin, bone broth, organ meats like liver, and cage-free egg yolks. According to the study, a diet rich in proline is linked to an increased risk of depression.

    #109226
    WES
    Participant

    In case anyone missed it, Joe declared an emergency over implementing green energy. What joe really did was extend the use of mail-in-ballot voting for November’s mid-terms. The Uniparty will win again!

    The CDC is mandating masks to insure mail-in-ballot voting occurs in November. The CDC hasn’t lost the plot!

    Soros is just a front for the CIA. It is the CIA that is funding liberal prosecutors in America! The CIA is not allowed to be involved in American domestic affairs. The CIA uses foreigners to influence American domestic affairs.

    Joe is now forcing Europe and the US to compete for the same limited sources of oil and gas. But first Joe took steps to limit the supply of oil and gas. Joe is helping US energy companies make a killing on both sides of the Atlantic!

    Unfortunately joe forgot he is also helping Russia too! In the past, the US drove oil prices down to hurt Russia! Joe is working for RussiaRussiaRussia!

    The Russians have now recaptured 97% of the Lydonek Republic. The Ukrainians are losing by winning! Nothing like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory! (Of course, I always say that about the Toronto Maple Leafs!)

    So Joe is killing 3 birds with one stone by increasing the ethanol in gas. Kills everyone’s ICEs while creating shortages of food and fertilizer to drive up their costs.

    Please tell me again that joe isn’t a front for the CIA to steal the election so they can openly mettle in America’s domestic affairs!

    #109227
    zerosum
    Participant

    On prime time, Thursday
    “How to overthrow a government ”
    1. Remember, Guns are not allowed.
    2. Don’t talk about it before you do it. The gov. is listening.
    3. If the gov. hears you, because it is paranoid they will accuse you and put you in jail with no trial or proof.
    4. Pretend to be a democrat. Democrats think all republicans are mentally unstable and are willing to pass gun control laws that would make it possible to remove/prevent you from acquiring/having guns.
    5. Do not take unescorted tours of gov. offices
    6. Vote no for/on everything the gov. wants/proposes
    7. Take your 10% before the revolution

    #109228
    John Day
    Participant

    “Unintended Consequences” has a picture of a lovely tomato in pre-lasagne phase and MORE Michael Hudson! https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/unintended-consequences?s=w

    Michael Hudson’s latest essay focuses on the urgent choices that face the food-importing nations this summer, especially those with $US debts to pay.
    I​ am greatly appreciative of Professor Hudson’s persistence in bringing this attack upon humanity by global multinational financial-capitalist interests​ to global attention.
    ​Professor Hudson’s analysis of the $US global hegemony, even without the backing of gold, was the book “Super Imperialism”. He did not intend this, but his book became the intellectual foundation for the Nixon/Kissinger/Saudi “Petrodollar” arrangement. No current economist elucidates global capital flows and trade considerations better, or more nobly than Michael Hudson.​
    ​ My personal read is that the WEF & Friends Great-Reset plans have gotten out of synch with events on the ground, but that there is no way to change those plans, now in motion. The world was supposed to become more compliant and fearful with COVID. Some did. Others became warned and vigilant. Russia was forced to fight Ukraine, either by attacking or being attacked. Financial/economic sanctions were to crush the Russian economy, removing Russian options for economic action, paralyzing Russia. They did not. Russia is not paralyzed, currently has cash and oil and gas and grain and a level of trust and respect which is growing in the world.
    The food and fuel crisis was to increase costs to “global south” countries, so that they would be unable to buy food, fuel and to also pay their $US debts. They would be forced to comply with some new regime, which would further reduce their national rights and their national abilities to feed their people and economies. They already have the minimal economic levels for these needs, as they are commodity-exporters to global financial capitalism, and should keep all costs down, so that profits accrue to global financiers.​
    ​ This card is now being played, but instead of having no-choice-but-compliance, these nations now have a global champion who has weathered the attack of western-finance and NATO, has oil, gas, wheat, and fertilizer, and has enough budget-surplus, despite supporting a war against NATO, to make good deals on oil, fertilizer, wheat, and even good-for-cheap anti-aircraft missile systems, if something like that would also be useful…​
    ​ The result is … to be determined in these next few critical months…​ If the tipping-point has been passed, neoliberal globalism will lose power quickly.
    Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine?​ Michael Hudson
    Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries? …
    ..We are seeing a financially weaponized power grab by the U.S. Dollar Area over the Global South as well as over Western Europe. Without dollar credit from the United States and its IMF subsidiary, how can countries stay afloat? How hard will the U.S. act to block them from de-dollarizing, opting out of the U.S. economic orbit? …
    ​..​Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist (the customary euphemism for rentier monopolist) Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.”​ …
    ​ ​Is world famine and balance-of-payments crisis a deliberate US/NATO policy?​ …
    ​..Senegal’s President Sall worried that: “Anti-Russia sanctions have made this situation worse and now we do not have access to grain from Russia, primarily to wheat. And, most importantly, we do not have access to fertilizer.”
    ​ ​U.S. diplomats are forcing countries to choose whether, in George W. Bush’s words, “you are either for us or against us.” The litmus test is whether they are willing to force their populations to starve and shut down their economies for lack of food and oil by stopping trade with the world’s Eurasian core of China, Russia, India, Iran and their neighbors.​..
    ..The hope was that blocking it from selling its oil and gas, food or other exports would drive down the ruble’s exchange rate and “make Russia scream” (as the U.S. tried to do to Allende’s Chile to set the stage for is backing of the Pinochet military coup). Exclusion from the SWIFT bank-clearing system was supposed to disrupt Russia’s payment system and sales, while seizing Russia’s $300 billion om foreign-currency reserves held in the West was expected to collapse the ruble, preventing Russian consumers from buying the Western goods to which they had become accustomed. The idea (and it seems so silly in retrospect) was that Russia’s population would rise in rebellion to protest…​.​​ But the ruble soared rather than sunk, and Russia quickly replaced SWIFT with its own system linked to that of China…
    ​..​It is now looking like the major aim of the U.S. war in Ukraine all along was merely to serve as a catalyst, an excuse to impose sanctions that would disrupt the world’s food and energy trade, and to manage this crisis in a way that would afford U.S. diplomats an opportunity to confront Global South countries with the choice “Your loyalty and neoliberal dependency or your life​”​…
    ​..​Russia accounts for 40% of the world’s grain trade and 25 percent of the world fertilizer market (45 percent if Belarus is included). Any scenario would have included a calculation that if so large a volume of grain and fertilizer was withdrawn from the market, prices would soar, just as they have done for oil and gas.
    ​ ​Adding to the disruption in the balance-of-payments of countries having to import these commodities, the price is rising for buying dollars to pay their foreign bondholders and banks for debts falling due. The Federal Reserve’s tightening of interest rates has caused a rising premium for U.S. dollars…
    ​..​Most disruptions are in the 2 to 5 percent range, but today’s US/NATO sanctions are so far off the historical track that price increases will soar substantially above the historic range. Nothing like this has happened in recent times.
    ​ ​This suggests that what appeared in February to be a war between Ukrainians and Russia is really a trigger intended to restructure the world economy – and to do so in a way to lock U.S. control over the Global South…​
    ​..​The choice confronting Global South countries: to starve by paying their foreign bondholders and bankers, or to announce, as a basic principle of international law: “As sovereign countries, we put our survival above the aim of enriching foreign creditors who have made loans that have gone bad as a result of their choice to wage a new Cold War. As for the destructive neoliberal advice that the IMF and World Bank have given us, their austerity plans were destructive instead of helpful. Therefore, their loans have gone bad. As such, they have become odious.”​ …
    ​ ​(Since Kissinger/Nixon/Earl Butz) The major grain exporter was the heavily subsidized U.S. farm sector, followed by Europe’s highly subsidized Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These were the main grain exporters before Russia entered the picture. The US/NATO demand is to roll back the clock to restore dependency on the Dollar Area and its eurozone satellites.​..
    ​The implicit Russian and Chinese counterplan
    ​ ​What is needed for the world’s non-US/NATO population to survive is a new world trade and financial system. The alternative is world famine for much of the world. More people will die of the sanctions than have died on the Ukrainian battlefield. Financial and trade sanctions are as destructive as military attack…
    ​..​First, reject the sanctions and reorient trade to Russia, China, India, Iran and their fellow members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
    The problem is how to pay…
    ..Therefore, the second need is to declare a debt moratorium – in effect, a repudiation – of the debts that represent loans gone bad…
    ..A third corollary that follows from these economic imperatives is to replace the World Bank and its pro-U.S. policies of trade dependency and underdevelopment with a genuine Bank for Economic Acceleration. Along with this institution is a fourth corollary in the form of the new bank’s sibling: a replacement for the IMF free of austerity junk economics…
    ​(What protective umbrella might be extended this summer?) ​..The fifth requirement is for countries to protect themselves by joining a military alliance as an alternative to NATO, to avoid being turned into another Afghanistan, another Libya, another Iraq or Syria or Ukraine.

    Is US/NATO (with WEF help) pushing for a Global South famine?

    ​(NATO “member”) ​Turkey, Russia Agree To De-Mining Operation In Ukrainian Ports To Erect ‘Grain Corridor’
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/turkey-russia-agree-de-mining-operation-ukrainian-ports-erect-grain-corridor

    From the recent Ukraine-War update:
    ​ ​Rally in Rome – raising the issue of Italy’s withdrawal from NATO.
    ​ ​Israel – local residents remove Ukrainian flags, returning Israeli ones to their place. (While we note this, we also have to express abhorrence against the latest killings of journalists and the grabbing of more territories by the Israelis).
    ​ ​Erdogan states that EU members and other European countries are in a state of “panic” over the influx of refugees from Ukraine.
    ​ ​Chinese Ambassador to Russia Zhang Hanhui: We must put an end once and for all to the hegemony of the United States, with its eternal desire to interfere in the affairs of sovereign states
    ​ ​Medvedev: Russia’s achievement of the goals of the special operation in Ukraine should lead to the creation of a new non US centric system of international security.

    Sitrep Operation Z: Back into The Grind while the penny drops in Europe

    #109229
    John Day
    Participant

    Pediatrician: Data Is ‘Irrefutable’ — COVID Vaccines Are Dangerous for Kids
    For the last two years, Dr. Michelle Perro has been in the trenches treating COVID-19 complications, not only from infection but also from the jab, which has been far more problematic and deadly.
    ​..​“There is a bigger agenda here, because clearly these vaccines are dangerous for kids. There’s no doubt. The data is irrefutable, and yet we’ve proceeded. So, we’re dealing with other agendas here … I think parents need to rise up and protect their children, because this is not going away. If anything, it’s ramping up.”​…
    ..Perro also believes we must begin to create parallel systems and structures, as suggested by Mattias Desmet, Ph.D. The power of this strategy was demonstrated by Vaclav Havel, a political dissident who eventually became the president of Czechoslovakia.
    ​ ​A parallel structure is any kind of business, organization, technology, movement or creative pursuit that fits within a totalitarian society while being morally outside of it.
    ​ ​Once enough parallel structures are created, a parallel culture is born that functions as a sanctuary of sanity within a totalitarian world.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-vaccines-dangerous-kids-cola/?

    ​Don’t wait for these exemplary physicians to win against the FDA…
    Doctors Sue FDA, Allege Crusade Against Ivermectin ‘Unlawfully Interfered’ With Their Ability to Treat Patients
    In a lawsuit filed June 2, Drs. Robert L. Apter, Mary Talley Bowden and Paul E. Marik argued the FDA acted outside of its authority by directing the public, including health professionals and patients, to not use ivermectin — even though the drug is fully approved by the FDA for human use.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/doctors-fda-ivermectin-patients/?

    Increased emergency cardiovascular events among under-40 population in Israel during vaccine rollout and third COVID-19 wave
    ..While not establishing causal relationships, the findings raise concerns regarding vaccine-induced undetected severe cardiovascular side-effects and underscore the already established causal relationship between vaccines and myocarditis, a frequent cause of unexpected cardiac arrest in young individuals…
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z

    Spartacus: Possible Applications of Advanced Biotechnology (Military applications of any new technology will get priority funding, right?)
    Modern biotechnology is a double-edged sword, capable of healing and harming in equal measure
    https://iceni.substack.com/p/possible-applications-of-advanced?s=r

    People within the criminal cabals take actions. They feel invulnerable… Time passes.
    Who are the scientists [from Fauci’s NIAID, Fort Detrick, W.H.O. and Metabiota] who warned us about money pox in 2010?
    They were setting the stage for an era of fear… Meryl Nass MD
    https://merylnass.substack.com/p/who-are-the-scientists-from-faucis?s=r

    #109230

    Willem- I scanned the article. Depressed fruit flies?
    Did they tell the lab mice they were cage-free eggs and that made them sad?

    Good grief.

    #109231
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @ArmenioPereira

    Spengler’s comparison between organisms and group dynamics, like all metaphor, can be (sometimes) useful as a teaching aid to understanding complex systems, but it can not be extended (logically) as proof that the items are analogous in other ways as well. The two things are decidedly not perfect analogs of each other.

    #109232
    John Day
    Participant

    Armenio Pereira said: “Do your body change by your own volition? Or regardless?
    Oswald Spengler postulated that civilizations are akin to organisms, I take this idea a step further by saying that events are also akin to organisms.”

    Part-1: False dichotomy. Bodies change volitionally and without volition. (also counter-volitionally.)

    Part-2: What is an “organism” or a “super organism”?
    Organisms may be thought of as causal actors, and also react to stimuli, seeking and avoiding stimuli.
    One cell is an organism, but a eukaryotic cell contains subcellular “cells” like mitochondria, which were long before internalized one-celled organisms with special cooperative functions, like photosynthesis, for example.
    An insect is an organism. A whale is an organism.
    A pod of dolphins can behave in concert to perform tasks.
    Is a pod of dolphins an organism?
    A fungal mycelium stretching for miles underground is an organism.

    Human societies, and planetary life are modeled as “superorganisms”. It’s a useful model.
    Is there a “collective consciousness”? Is there a “collective unconscious”? Carl Jung made a good case for deep spirit connections between people, “Zeitgeist”, the “Spirit of the Times”.
    It’s an explanation for things we have seen and are seeing. There are other explanations.

    Events and actions arise, and there are mass-actions of conscious and unconscious organisms that we might think of or refer to as “events”.

    Please explain what you mean when you say that “events are akin to organisms”.
    I’m missing your train of thought.

    #109233
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    @D Benton Smith

    Theories can be extended to the infinite, limited only by the boundaries of one’s own imagination.
    I can advance theories as long as I keep the faculties to do so and you can keep on refuting them to your heart’s content.
    Couldn’t avoid to notice the conspicuous absence of any refutation regarding volition and change.
    Best regards.

    #109234
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    @ilargi

    Since the Jan 6 circus will start Thursday, please remind me: not one single gun was found on any of the participants, right? Not a shot was fired, other than the one from the “other side” that killed Ashli Babbit .
    But there are people who have spent the past 17 months in high security isolation and are now threatened with life in prison anyway?
    Maybe in 1021 you could overthrow a government with beanstalks and witches and town criers, but today? I simply do not get it.

    Same old, same old…

    After Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, he seized every opportunity to turn Germany into a one-party dictatorship. He also moved carefully to organize the police power necessary to enforce his long-term policies of “racial” purification and European conquest both inside and outside the legal framework of the German constitution.

    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-terror-begins

    Political Prisoners ~ The Nazis demanded that Germans accept the premises of the Nazi worldview and live their lives accordingly. They tolerated no criticism, dissent, or nonconformity. Hitler’s political opponents were the first victims of systematic Nazi persecution.

    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/political-prisoners

    Nazi Political Violence in 1933 ~ Following Adolf Hitler’s appointment as German chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazi Party’s paramilitary organizations, the SA and the SS, unleashed waves of violence against political opponents and Jews.

    Erich Mühsam ~ Identification picture of Erich Mühsam taken in the Oranienburg concentration camp. Mühsam, an anarchist and a pacifist, worked as an editor and writer; he was imprisoned during World War I for opposing the war. Arrested during the massive roundup of Nazi political opponents following the Reichstag fire (February 27, 1933), Mühsam was tortured to death in Oranienburg on July 11, 1934. Oranienburg, Germany, February 3, 1934.

    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-political-violence-in-1933

    Beyond amazed at how “free citizens” can not recognize lying, hateful psychopaths who stimulate fantastical adoration through the weaving duplicitous fictions, when any rationally sane “human” can readily perceive their evil propaganda, to divide & conquer, just another crop of monsters brewing a new flavor of genocidal “one party” totalitarianism.

    The mind boggles, but my spirit (and yours) knows the truth.

    #109235
    slimyalligator
    Participant

    Hello gang, Read up a bit more on Biden administration’s ethanol expansion proposal please. Ethanol gasoline blends have been a disaster since the ‘git go’. Topsoil depletion, destruction of our economy and ‘groundwater pollution are the real issues The destruction of combustion gas engines large and small are a secondary issue (yeah, buy an EV) with what? I have and still have roots in agriculture. Our countries (USA) policy for the last 100 years has been ‘cheap gasoline and cheap food’ Regenerative Ag is out of reach for the next three decades or more. If we achieved Masanobu Fukuoka’s ideals in my birth year 1956 we would be further along in a right living world. Not there yet are we? So we dilute gasoline with ethanol and you and I travel less MPG? Dated article from Cornell University. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2001/08/ethanol-corn-faulted-energy-waster-scientist-says

    #109236
    zerosum
    Participant

    The press conference is not being reported or I can’t find it.
    https://globalnews.ca/video/8903555/bergen-says-liberals-massively-out-of-touch-with-canadians/
    Bergen says Liberals ‘massively out of touch’ with Canadians
    Posted June 7 2022 01:05pm

    #109237
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

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