Jul 042022
 
 July 4, 2022  Posted by at 9:12 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Salvador Dali Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion 1930

 

Russia Claims Control Of Pivotal Eastern Ukrainian Province (AP)
To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States
Yes, You CAN Blame Biden For High Energy Prices (Shellenberger)
Bezos Slams Biden Appeal For Lower Gasoline Prices (F24)
Supreme Court Marshal Calls on States To Crackdown on Protesters (Turley)
NY To Require 3 Years Of Social Media History For Gun Carry Permit (PM)
Text Messages Show Cassidy Hutchinson Referring To Jan 6 Committee As ‘BS’ (DC)
Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? (Kulldorff)
Spartacast 01 (Spartacus)
US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation By The Far Right (G.)

 

 

“France now imports more Russian liquefied natural gas than at any time in history, writes Welt.
The requirement to pay for gas in rubles does not apply to LNG supplies, and France has as many as four terminals for receiving such tankers.”

 

 

Dude

 

 

Myocarditis cases in USA, Ages 12-20:
2019: 16
2020: 9
2021: 2,301

 

 

 

 

 

 

The MSM still can’t do normal reporting on Ukraine. Because Russia keeps winning.

Russia Claims Control Of Pivotal Eastern Ukrainian Province (AP)

Russia claimed control Sunday over the last Ukrainian stronghold in an eastern province that is key to achieving a major goal of Moscow’s grinding war. The General Staff of Ukraine’s military reported that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Luhansk province. President Volodymr Zelenskyy acknowledged the withdrawal but said the fight for the city was still raging on its outskirts. If confirmed, Russia’s complete seizure of Luhansk would provide its troops with a stronger base from which to press their advance in the Donbas, a region of mines and factories that President Vladimir Putin is bent on capturing in a campaign that could determine the course of the entire war. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin that Russia’s troops, with a local separatist militia, “have established full control over the city of Lysychansk” and now hold all of Luhansk, according to a ministry statement published Sunday.

As is typical with such descriptions, the Russian statement characterized the victories as “the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic.” Separatists in Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk, which make up the Donbas and are home to significant Russian-speaking populations, declared independence from Kyiv in 2014 and their forces have battled Ukrainian troops there ever since. Russia formally recognized the self-proclaimed republics days before its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian forces fought fiercely for Lysychansk in recent days after the neighboring city fell last week. On Sunday evening, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military confirmed on social media that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk “to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders.”

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy noted the withdrawal. But he added that “Ukraine does not give anything back” and vowed to return with more modern weapons. Citing his forces’ success in recapturing other territory, he promised, “There will be a day when we will say the same about Donbas.” Earlier, Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were still battling Russian soldiers on Lysychansk’s outskirts “in a very difficult and dangerous situation.” “We cannot give you the final judgment. Lysychansk is still being fought for,” Zelenskyy told a news conference in Kyiv given alongside Australia’s visiting prime minister. He noted that territory can move quickly from one side to the other.

Read more …

Good advice. And a good day for it too.

To Avoid Civil War, Learn to Tolerate Different Laws in Different States (Mises)

Most commentary on the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—which overturns Roe v. Wade—has focused on the decision’s effect on the legality of abortion in various states. That’s an important issue. It may be, however, that the Dobbs decision’s effect on political decentralization in the United States is a far bigger deal. After all, the ruling isn’t so much about abortion as it is about the federal government’s role in abortion. State governments are free to make abortion 100 percent legal within their own borders. Some states have already done so. The court’s ruling limits only the federal government’s prerogatives over abortion law, and this has the potential to lead to many other limitations on federal power as well. In this way, Dobbs is a victory for those seeking to limit federal power.

The decentralization is all to the good, and there’s nothing novel about it. Historically, state laws in the US have varied broadly on a variety of topics from alcohol consumption to divorce. This was also true of abortion before Roe v. Wade. Moreover, decentralizing abortion policy in this way actually works to defuse national conflict. This is becoming even more important as cultural divides in the United States are clearly accelerating and become more entrenched. Rather than fight with increasing alarm and aggression over who controls the federal government—and thus who imposes the winner’s preferences on everyone else—people in different states will have more choices in choosing whether to live under proabortion or antiabortion regimes.

In other words, decentralization forces policymakers to behave as they should in a confederation of states: they must tolerate people doing things differently across state lines. This will be essential in avoiding disaster, and laissez-faire liberals (i.e., “classical liberals”) have long supported decentralization as a key in avoiding dangerous political conflicts. Ludwig von Mises, for example, supported decentralization because, as he put it, it “is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil … wars.”

Read more …

Huh? “If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.”

Yes, You CAN Blame Biden For High Energy Prices (Shellenberger)

This July 4th, as you fill up your car or truck, you might be tempted to blame President Joe Biden for high gasoline prices. You shouldn’t, say some experts. It’s Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault, they say. The US had to cut off Russian oil imports to punish Putin for invading Ukraine. Meanwhile, Biden himself has blamed the American energy industry. “At a time of war,” Biden wrote in an open letter to the industry on June 15, “high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable… companies must take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product.” But US refineries are already operating at 94 percent of their capacity, with US refineries in the Gulf of Mexico running at 98 percent, which is the highest rate in 30 years.

Running refineries at a higher capacity than that risks damaging the equipment. As such, Biden isn’t just wrong, he insulted some of the hardest working people operating in one of the most dangerous industries in America. But, on May 12, Biden’s Interior Department blocked a proposal to open up more than one million acres of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling. Two days later, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency blocked plans to expand an oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands. Biden and his defenders said he had to block the expansion of the Virgin Islands refinery, given how polluting it was. But had Biden’s EPA allowed the Virgin Island refinery to expand, the owners would have poured nearly $3 billion into retrofitting the plant so it produced gasoline and other products more cleanly, while significantly increasing production at the same time.

Furthermore, anybody who cares about air pollution and climate change should want more oil and gas drilling, not less. US emissions declined 22% between 2005 and 2020, mostly because cheap natural gas has replaced coal. In truth, there are many things Biden could have done, and still should do, to lower energy prices. He could invoke the National Defense Act to accelerate the rate of oil and gas permits. He could set a floor of $80/barrel for re-filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which would be a powerful incentive for the industry, because it would prevent prices from falling to unprofitable levels. Biden could announce trade agreements with American allies to supply them with liquified natural gas, which would incentivize more natural gas production and lower prices. If Biden got America on a wartime footing, as he should be given Russia’s aggression in Europe, we would see the lowering of oil, gas and petroleum prices in less than one year.

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“99% of gas stations in America are small business owned. The average gas station’s profit actually DROPPED from April to May. ”

Bezos Slams Biden Appeal For Lower Gasoline Prices (F24)

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has criticized President Joe Biden for calling on oil companies to lower sky-high gasoline prices, prompting the White House to come to the US leader’s defense on Sunday. “My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril,” Biden tweeted Saturday. “Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now,” Biden added. Bezos said Biden’s remarks amounted to “either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.” “Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” the US billionaire tweeted Saturday.

Gasoline prices at the pump have become a symbol of broader price rises in the United States, and they are sapping Biden’s approval rating ahead of legislative elections in November. Biden has regularly attacked oil companies, saying they only care about profits and not the well-being of the average consumer. The companies say in turn they have increased production to try to tame prices but that these are set on the world market and are subject to dynamics that are not under the control of US oil giants. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Twitter Sunday that oil prices have dropped about $15 a barrel over the past month. “But prices at the pump have barely come down. That’s not ‘basic market dynamics.’ It’s a market that is failing the American consumer,” she wrote.

Gasoline prices have been above $5 a gallon since early June, which is unprecedented in the car-crazy nation. Prices have fallen slightly since, but remain far from the $3 a gallon level of a year ago. John Kirby, White House spokesman on national security issues, also defended the president Sunday in an appearance on Fox News. “The president is working very, very hard across many fronts… to try to bring that price down,” Kirby said.

Read more …

Governors refuse.

Supreme Court Marshal Calls on States To Crackdown on Protesters (Turley)

In a rare move, Supreme Court Marshal Gail Curley has sent letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin demanding that authorities put an end to picketing and “threatening activity” outside the homes of SCOTUS justices. The letter seeks to use state laws to achieve what the Justice Department has clearly rejected under federal law. If the letter prompts arrests, we could see a major free speech challenge in the courts. The timing of the letter, however, is particularly interesting and may reflect a recognition of the limits of the federal law. Like most Americans, I have denounced these protests targeting the homes of justices as excessive and reckless (though one law professor actually suggested that such protests could be more aggressive).

However, I have also questioned the use of a federal law to arrest protesters. Under a federal law, 18 U.S.C. 1507, any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a U.S. court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” I believe that a court would declare the use of the federal law against protesters on public sidewalks to be unconstitutional. There are issues of free speech, assembly, and vagueness that would be likely raised in federal court. Indeed, if you apply the broad interpretation of the law, even protests outside of the Supreme Court building could result in arrests since courthouses are also included.

However, the timing is particularly interesting. After the release of the decision in in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I noted that it would be even harder to use this law because the statute refers to “interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge … in the discharge of his duty.” With the release of the decision, there is no chance that the protesters are interfering, impeding, or influencing the decision. Thus, even if the constitutional arguments were rejected, a court could question whether the law can be read as applying to protests generally against the justices for their views. That is what makes the date so interesting. Dobbs came out on June 24, 2022. One week later, Curley sought enforcement of state laws as an alternative to federal enforcement.

It may reflect the view that, even if the law is constitutional to arrest protesters, it would be narrowly construed in light of the fact that Dobbs is now on the books. Since it was clear for weeks that the Justice Department would not enforce the law to arrest protesters outside of these homes, the timing of the letter could reflect a dwindling likelihood of enforcement in light of the end of the term. Curley wrote Gov. Hogan: “I would respectfully request that you direct the Maryland State Police to enforce Maryland and Montgomery County laws that squarely prohibit picketing at the homes of Supreme Court Justices who reside in Maryland.” Both the Maryland and Virginia governors responded by calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to use his authority under federal law to stop the protesters.

Read more …

That’s a first for me. Sounds crazy.

NY To Require 3 Years Of Social Media History For Gun Carry Permit (PM)

New York Governor Kathy Hochul once again signed sweeping gun legislation into law on Friday that created several severe new restrictions on obtaining a gun in the state, including drastically increasing concealed carry regulations and requiring applicants to turn over social media history. According to the the legislation, part of Hochul’s new criteria to obtain a concealed carry permit will be an applicant giving the government a list containing three years of history of their current and inactive social media accounts. Applicants must also have 16 hours of firearm training, provide four character references, and list the contact information for any domestic partners or adults of any kind they live with.

Potential applicants will also be required to show “good moral character,” meaning “the essential character, temperament and judgment necessary to be entrusted with a weapon and to use it only in a manner that does not endanger oneself and others. At a press conference regarding the new legislation, Hochul said “we are creating a definitive list of sensitive locations where individuals will not be able to carry firearms.” This list includes “schools, summer camps, libraries, daycares, parks and playgrounds, places children gather, theaters, museums, entertainment venues, places of worship for religious observation, polling places, educational institutions, and health medical facilities. Federal State Local government buildings, homeless and domestic violence shelters, places where alcohol is consumed, restaurants, bars, public transportation, subway buses, airports and at public demonstrations and rallies, and in Times Square.”

Another new rule is a “Default of No Concealed Carry on Private Property and Businesses Unless Deemed Permissible by Property Owners.” Hochul said of this law, “We are making ‘no open carry’ the default position for private businesses. That means that any business, grocery store, retail, private home, place that wants to allow guns on their premises will have to demonstrate that and establish that they put a sign out there that says concealed carry guns are welcome here.”

Read more …

She is a strange story.

Text Messages Show Cassidy Hutchinson Referring To Jan 6 Committee As ‘BS’ (DC)

The January 6 committee’s key witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, called the committee “bs” in a text message obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller. On Feb 1. Hutchinson sent a text to a conservative activist with connections to the First Amendment Fund, which is a group started by the American Conservative Union that helps Trump officials cover costs for Jan. 6 lawyers. Matt Schlapp said Hutchinson approached CPAC for help through the First Amendment Fund. Schlapp said he is happy they did not end up assisting her because she was relaying White House “hallway gossip as fact.” In the text message, Hutchinson says: “Hey (redacted)! This is Cassidy Hutchinson. Kind of a random question, but do you still work for the Schlapp’s at the ACU?” To which the person responded, “Hi, Yes!”


Hutchinson then said, “Do you happen to know a First Amendment fund POC I could reach out to? I was subpoenaed in early Nov., but the committee waited to serve me until last week (after Ben’s deposition).” “I had to accept service because the U.S. Marshalls came to my apartment last Wednesday, but I haven’t made contact with the Committee. I’m just on a tight timeline and just trying to figure out what my options are to deal with this bs,” Hutchinson added. In another text message reviewed by the Daily Caller, Hutchinson told the conservative activist that she does not want things to get “unnecessarily elevated” in regards to the Jan. 6 committee. Hutchinson made headlines after testifying before the Jan. 6 committee, where she claimed former President Donald Trump lunged for the steering wheel in an effort to reroute the car to the Capitol where protesters were gathering. Sources close to the Secret Service have denied her claims.

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Kulldorff tries too hard to sound reasonable. No, they are not safe. So say so.

Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? (Kulldorff)

Covid-recovered people have natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. So, the benefit of vaccination is – at best – minimal. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as in the randomized trials, there is a negative risk-benefit difference. Why are we mandating people in this group to be vaccinated? It is both unethical and damaging to public health. While everyone can get infected, children have a minuscule risk of covid mortality. There is very limited safety data from the trials on children. If the risk of adverse reactions is the same as for adults, the harms outweigh the risks. Children should not receive these vaccines. Older people above 70 have a much higher risk of covid mortality than the population in the Fraiman study. If their risk of adverse reaction is the same, then the benefits outweigh the harms.

Hence, older people who have never had covid and are not yet vaccinated may benefit from these vaccines. However, we do not know if they are better than the Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca vaccines. It is unclear from the clinical trial data whether the benefits outweigh the risks for working-age adults who have not been vaccinated and who have not already had covid. This is true both historically, for the original covid variants, and currently for the newer ones. The Fraiman study analyzes data after the first and second doses. Both risks and benefits may differ for booster shots, but no randomized trial has properly evaluated the trade-off. These results concern only the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Fraiman et al. did not analyze data on the adenovirus-vector vaccines marketed by Johnson & Johnson and Astra-Zeneca.

Benn et al. found that they reduced all-cause mortality (RR=0.37, 95% CI:0.19-0.70), but nobody has used trial data to analyze AESIs for these vaccines. Critically, the Fraiman and Benn studies had a follow-up of only a few months after the second dose because Pfizer and Moderna, unfortunately, terminated their randomized trials a few months after receiving emergency use authorization. Of course, a longer-term benefit can provide a basis to tolerate negative or neutral short-term risk-benefit differences. However, that is unlikely since we know from observational studies that mRNA vaccine efficacy deteriorates a few months after the second dose.

There may also be long-term adverse reactions to the vaccine regarding which we do not yet know. Since the randomized trials ended early, we must look at observational data to answer that question. The publicly available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System is of low quality, with both under- and over-reporting. The best observational data is from CDCs Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) and FDA’s Biologics and Effectiveness Safety System (BEST), but there have only been limited reports from these systems. Fraiman and colleagues have produced the best evidence yet regarding the overall safety of the mRNA vaccines. The results are concerning. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and FDA to ensure that benefits outweigh harms. They have failed to do so.

Read more …

Haven’t followed the Spartacus group for a bit.

Spartacast 01 (Spartacus)

SARS-CoV-2 was not the product of natural zoonosis. It was not the product of an accidental lab leak, either. It was the product of deliberate, willful bioterrorism by what I’ve come to call the Biodefense Mafia. This Biodefense Mafia grew out of an expansion of USAID, DARPA, BARDA, and DTRA-affiliated civilian biolabs, both in the US and elsewhere, thanks to the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program and Robert Kadlec’s expansion of biodefense after Amerithrax. That initial expansion of the Biodefense Mafia involved Kadlec awarding rigged contracts to Fuad El-Hibri’s company, BioPort, for anthrax vaccines. BioPort was a spinoff of DynPort, which, in turn, was spun off from the American mercenary company DynCorp in a partnership with Porton in the UK.

Yes, the same DynCorp that Kathryn Bolkovac blew the whistle on in Bosnia for sex trafficking of young girls, the same DynCorp that continued to receive US State Department contracts even after soliciting “dancing boys” in Afghanistan, and the same DynCorp whose OV-10 Bronco turboprops loaned from the US State Department for coca eradication crop dusting with RoundUp in Colombia happened to have the same tail number as a helicopter mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, N474AW, on one of the aircraft. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Robert Kadlec again awarded rigged contracts for COVID-19 vaccines to Fuad El-Hibri and Emergent BioSolutions, which is what BioPort renamed themselves to. Emergent BioSolutions came under fire due to the scandalous condition of their vaccine manufacturing facilities and the poor quality-control practices exercised there.

Throughout the 2000s, Michael Callahan was part of an effort by the US State Department called the BioIndustry Initiative, authorized in the Defense and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2002, where US scientists would visit various former Soviet biowarfare labs in Russia and discuss technologies the Soviets developed that could be patented, commercialized, marketed, and “peacefully” used in drugs and therapies. He was on the ground in Wuhan in 2019 and 2020, as DARPA’s “Man in Wuhan”, suggesting that the H2 blocker famotidine might be useful for treating COVID-19, based on observations of patient data.

Read more …

Nothing against drag queens, but don’t push them on little kids.

US Drag Queens Stand Their Ground Amid Intimidation By The Far Right (G.)

The drag queens were out in force across New York’s recent Pride parade triggering cheers and waves with their flamboyant and extravagant costumes. But this year the world of American drag has been marred by growing fears of violence and intimidation as they have been specifically targeted by conservatives and extremist far-right and militia groups amid a general rise in anti-LGBTQ hate. One of the main targets for rightwing ire has been Drag Queen Story Hour events where drag queens will read books to children at public libraries. Three weeks ago at a reading in a library in San Lorenzo, 30 miles from San Francisco, a group of men, one wearing a T-shirt stenciled with the image of an assault rifle, interrupted a drag performer reading The Kindness Book to pre-schoolers, frightening all.

Authorities said at least five men who appeared in the black and yellow uniform aligned with the extremist Proud Boy group hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at the story hour’s performer, Panda Dulce, who later said the interruption was “a brazen act of vitriolic intimidation”. The incident is being investigated as a hate crime. Members of the same organisation – designated a hate group by The Southern Poverty Law Group – also disrupted a Pride story-time event in South Carolina where kids were being read Daddy and Dada and Heather Has Two Mommies. One parent was told they were a child abuser. Last week a drag event at a California bar, Mojos, was cancelled after protestors yelling homophobic abuse sought to enter the premises.

The pattern of intimidation, in cases not limited to the intimidation of drag queens, comes as Pride month itself has become a target for rightwing extremists in the US. Recently in Idaho a group of far-right Patriot Front extremists were arrested amid fears they intended to attack a Pride march in the state. Drag queens themselves, however, are standing their ground.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chinatown

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle July 4 2022

Viewing 19 posts - 41 through 59 (of 59 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #110959
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Community Guidelines

    Guideline: a piece of information that suggests how something should be done (Cambridge dictionary)

    Suggest: to mention an idea, possible plan, or action for other people to consider (Cambridge dictionary)

    Twitter cannot even tell the truth when playing policeman, when punishing people for lying. They have all the power yet they still can’t tell the truth. Reminds me of western government.

    #110960
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @Raúl Ilargi Meijer said:

    Ever since the EU started, Germany was chided for its huge trade surplus. Now it’s gone. Anybody happy?

    China is happy, they will soon have the largest operational German-car manufacturing plants. All they have to do is buy the distressed Mercedes, BMW etc and they will suddenly claim to be the world’s largest luxury car manufacturer. The more the west is squeezed with “stupid-rules” energy, the more China’s “no-rules” energy will win. I am still waiting for western governments to introduce the laws that only allow cars made in China to burn gasoline.

    #110961
    Redneck
    Participant

    Everything that is happening in the West benefits China. The Chinese political system is also being installed in the West , censorship and authoritarianism . Is the WEF/deep state actually working to deliver us all to China, economically and socially? It sure looks that way.

    #110962
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #110963
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #110964
    WES
    Participant

    Sadly it looks like the Dutch farmers protest is going to end exactly the same way Canada’s trucker freedom convoy did.

    #110965
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @John Day said:

    People now are so broadly unable to employ their rational processes for simple​ ​preservation​ of themselves and their families​ lately.

    Survival is a matter of problem solving and problem solving takes practice. Maybe we are being starved of problem solving practice?

    For example, if I wonder how best to lay the concrete for a path outside my house, I can go to youtube and see loads of videos of people doing the exact same thing. When I was a child, Dad and I would work it out ourselves, and sure we sometimes did it wrong – usually over engineering it – but we had to think through the problem.

    Has the ready supply of solutions impacted our ability to solve problems?

    I grew up without any internet and only TV when in my teens, so I did a lot of reading and a lot of doing. The doing always involved an element of problem solving, whether building a tree house or a go-cart or just helping Dad with some gardening or some rapairs in the house. I can still remember sitting down with my Dad and working out how to wire two light switches – one by each door of a room – that controlled the same room light.

    I can also still remember, in my thirties, reading my Dad’s brand new Readers Digest DIY manual and discovering all the things we had done right and wrong when working on the house.

    #110966
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Pfizer is trying to kill a significant portion of the population while the Dutch government is trying to close down sources of food. Given that WEF is pulling the strings of both, why is WEF not just waiting for the population to drop and then these farms will be redundant?

    The only answers to come to mind and I think they are probably doing both:

    • they are flexing their muscles to show you who is in charge: the more they beat you the more you will cower and accept their authority.
    • they are hoping to kill a second wave of people through starvation or poor nutrition.

    Every day it becomes more and more obvious to me that violence is the only way to stop these people. We used to have the power of going to the shops and choosing what food to eat, but now these people are going to take away that power and will tell us what food to eat. Every step is a step closer to slavery and although it will hit the city people first, it will end up hiting everybody apart from the oligarchs and their whores.

    #110967
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    The Traitor’s Dilemma

    By appealing to unbounded greed and unfounded arrogance the East lured the West’s treasonous leaders into betraying the “herds” which were the sole source and delusional substance of their own power in the first place. Having completed the bought and paid for task of dismantling their own nations and killing their own peoples what possible further need is there for such feckless tools? To trust or respect them in the least would be unthinkable, and to keep them on the payroll after the job is done would be useless. After all, consider what those treasonous maggots just did !

    As for the newly enlightened mindset of the betrayed underlings (the so-called “herd”), having personally seen and suffered the level of sadism, and sheer incompetence so blatantly committed and admitted, well, they won’t have much use for their former masters either. A few dolts will miss the point (there are always a few) but the vast majority will have eyes freshly pried open by events so personally painfully obvious that even the idiots will have to see it. Utter betrayal of trust, deadly famine, pestilence, war and vaccine induced sudden adult death syndrome have a tendency to be noticed.

    In this manner the so-called elites losing both grateful paymasters and loyal slaves. It’s already visible , and accelerating. Soon they will have neither, at which point they will have become, as the Brits would say it, “redundant” . . . . and we all know the consequences of that.

    By wanting total loyalty and total betrayal, at the same time, they are thereby gored on the horns of their own dilemma.

    #110968
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @WES said:

    Sadly it looks like the Dutch farmers protest is going to end exactly the same way Canada’s trucker freedom convoy did.

    People have very little power and what they do have is being removed. The Dutch farmers will lose their farms because the wider Dutch government is reporting to a higher authoritarian government in the same way as the Canadian government proved itself to be in the grip of a higher authoritarian government.

    Unfortunately the people are not yet suffering enough to stand up and fight, but the day will come when the only solution is violence and by then the people will be so heavily monitored that they will have no way of pushing back. China is a good example of exactly this, they still respect Mao, despite his track record of continual failure, but do not adhere to any of Mao’s beliefs. They only believe in totalitarian control with the aristocracy (CCP) controlling the country and having the best jobs and most of the money.

    It sounds as though the west will be forced through a Jim Jones phase, similar to Mao and his cultural revolution, but this time trying to get everybody to be “happy” as slaves: being happy as a slave means losing your individualism, sort of rings a bell, just like Mao did to anybody who was not an uneducated disposable pleb. You will be happy or I will put a bullet through your head for resisting.

    The Jim Jones phase will be the most scary part of the great reset. If you do not respond to the torture they will put a bullet in your head or use you for some form of transhuman experimental shite, an extension of the Nazi medical experiments. That is probably the solution they will use for all the people who use “alternative” web sites such as TAE.

    I call it the Jim Jones phase because Mao went all “religious cult leader”, something that I have some immediate knowledge of watching the evangelical christians convert the sinners in Africa. The first step is to recognise you are a sinner, confess your sins etc etc then Christ (Mao, Jim Jones) will save you etc. The same old playbook that has been around for centuries, trying to show you what a bad person you are and how this new cult will save you, turn you into a valid person, a good person. Sure, Jim Jones and Mao used murder, Mao also used torture, not sure whether Jones used torture, but I suspect he did “for your own good”.

    And don’t fool yourself that the people in charge are not just as crazy as Mao and Jim Jones and all the other similar satan-on-earth devils.

    #110969
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    It is frustratingly weird that the rising authoritarian regime in the West has no single despot to rule the failing Empire. Joe Biden is certainly no Caligula. Instead, today’s Western Empire is a reign of Insiders — the very worst of rule by committee.

    This post highlights it. The Insiders keep showing up. I first noticed the Spin Admiral, John Kirby, in the Pentagon briefings in 2014 during the Ukraine Coup. With the Biden Administration, he returned to the Pentagon. Now, he has been promoted to National Security Spokesman for the White House. He made no sense then or now. Where Victoria Nuland went, he followed.

    Really, it is quite simple, if it makes money, it is greenlighted, no matter the consequences, from war to pestilence and famine. It is called profiteering.

    An Iron Curtain must be rebuilt and manned to separate Western Europe from Russia. Or, if history rhymes again, the current proxy world war will escalate to the third one in little over a century and it will make the earth a desert. Any survivors will call it peace.

    #110970
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    Alastair Crooke rips the WEF and Silicon Valley a new one in his latest article: The ‘Wrong’ Turning Brings on the ‘Fourth Turning’

    The following is an excerpt:

    World Economic Forum Guru of the Great Reset, Israeli Professor Yuval Noah Harari, has stated this explicitly, saying:

    “If you have enough data, and you have enough computing power, you can understand people better than they understand themselves and then you can manipulate them in ways that were previously impossible and in such a situation, the old democratic systems stop functioning. We need to re-invent democracy in this new era in which humans are now hackable animals. The whole idea that humans have this ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ and have free will … that’s over”.

    Well, it was in Afghanistan that such a vision was stood-up over recent years. This was to be a showcase for technical managerialism. In very real terms, Afghanistan turned into a testbed for every single innovation in technocratic project management – with each innovation heralded as precursor to our wider future. Funds poured in, and an army of globalised technocrats arrived to oversee the process. Big data, AI and the utilization of ever-expanding sets of technical and statistical metrics, were to topple old ‘stodgy’ ideas. Military sociology, in the form of “Human Terrain Teams” and other innovative creations, were unleashed to bring order to chaos.

    The fall of the western-instituted regime in Afghanistan however, so clearly revealed that today’s managerial class – consumed by the notion of technocracy as the only means of effecting functional rule – birthed instead, something thoroughly rotten – “data-driven defeat”, as one U.S. Afghan veteran described it – so rotten, that it collapsed in a matter of days.

    #110971
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    In our circle of friends there are now 5 down with covid…all vaxed of course…
    So far none too serious thank the gods…

    #110972
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    Eat the Bugs

    #110973
    those darned kids
    Participant

    #110974
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @VietnamVet said:

    It is frustratingly weird that the rising authoritarian regime in the West has no single despot to rule the failing Empire.

    Maybe we are to be ruled by some amazing AI machine that will soon appear on our TV screens as our new leader. If the leadership commitee wants to stay anonymous, what better way than to pretend that AI is running the show and that the AI machine is way more clever than all of us, so should never be questioned? A sort of intellectual, mystic god, ripe to have its chips squeezed to give the right answer. Trouble with humans is that they tend to believe their own bullshit and then disaster awaits.

    #110975
    zerosum
    Participant

    I’m not going into details. You are all intelligent. Connect the dots.
    The battle is happening right now.

    1. Airports, airlines around the world are dysfunctional
    2. Issuing of passport in Canada is also dysfunctional.

    Attitude, work ethic, liability, pissed off, over worked, unrecognized, unqualified, “not my responsibility, feeling underpaid, etc.

    #111040
    WES
    Participant

    One thing the Ukrainian do every time they retreat is abandon all their wounded (and dead) to the Russians. I suspect this reflects the Ukrainian’s lack of medical help within their own ranks and the fact that the Ukrainians know the Russians are more capable of assisting the wounded. It also likely reflects on the very poor state the retreating Ukrainian urvivors are in too.

    Recently I saw some huge Ukrainian casualties figures of about 5,500, likely from a city the Russians took recently. About 2,000 were killed and about 3,500 wounded.

    The recent closed cauldron has shortened Russian frontlines from about 78 miles to just 25 miles. Since a battalion usually covers about 3 miles of front line, this frees up about 15 battalions for 2 weeks of rest. So maybe we will see a lull in the Russian attack?

    The Ukrainian gov has issued orders that all draft age men are not allowed to leave the cities, towns, or villages where they live. They have also demanded Nato round up all Ukrainian men in Europe and send them back to the Ukraine. More recently they have issued orders saying draft age Ukrainian women are now not allowed to leave their regions. All of this is obviously designed to make rounding up new cannon fodder easier, for the still in control, Nazis.

    Clearly fighting this war to the last Ukrainian is becoming inceasingly more difficult. The Ukrainian cannon fodder that couldn’t escape the country, has often gone into hiding. I suspect the Ukrainian women will soon be joining their hidden men folk. Then who will be left to keep the hidden fed?

    #111041
    WES
    Participant

    For the Dutch farmers, the Dutch gov has now authorized the police to shoot the farmers in their tractors. So the Dutch gov has now crossed this Rubicon. Vilolence is now OK.

    Freezing BDutch farmer’s bank accounts cannot be very far behind. I just hope Dutch farmers have taken notes on what happened in Canada and prepared accordingly. Their leaders will be soon arrested and jailed.

    I saw where some Dutch under cover police dressed up as farmers and infiltrated a protest. Then they began trying to turn the protest violent. The peaceful protesters saw this and confronted the undercover police, forcing them to retreat to a police van for protection, but not before pulling out hidden police batons.

    Hopefully the Dutch farmers succeed where the Canadian truckers failed. But I doubt it. It is probably already too late.

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