Nov 122022
 
 November 12, 2022  Posted by at 9:03 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Rembrandt van Rijn The three trees 1643

 

US Worried About EU Commitment To Punishing Russia (RT)
How Europe Is Destroying Its Own ‘Garden’ (MPN)
White House Divided On Pushing For Peace In Ukraine – NYT (RT)
Kiev Introduces New Restrictions On Speaking Russian (RT)
Sun Tzu Walks Into a Kherson Bar… (Escobar)
Russian Defense Ministry Gives Update On Kherson Withdrawal (RT)
Rewiring Eurasia: Mr. Patrushev Goes To Tehran (Escobar)
Kremlin Reacts To US Economic Pressure (RT)
Disruptions To Oil Supplies Possible Due To Upcoming EU Restrictions (Az.)
Greece Threatens To Block EU Gas Price Correction Mechanism (K.)
Bamboo Diplomacy: The China-SE Asia Romance (Escobar)
The Winners and Losers in a Shift in Control of Congress (Turley)
Federal Judge Declares Biden Loan Forgiveness Unconstitutional (Turley)
Flemish Government Preparing To Cancel WEF Membership (NNP)
A Committee Of Inquiry Into Bourla And von der Leyen (Anderson)

 

 

 

 

Elon has work to do…

 

 

Welfare queen

 

 

 

 

 

 

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
~Paulo Coelho

 

 

 

 

“People in Europe are “growing angry over sanctions and blame the US for rising costs,” putting their government under pressure to withdraw their support..”

US Worried About EU Commitment To Punishing Russia (RT)

EU nations are at risk of deviating from the US-led economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its military campaign in Ukraine, US officials told the media. People in Europe are “growing angry over sanctions and blame the US for rising costs,” putting their government under pressure to withdraw their support, Politico reported on Thursday, citing an internal US report. The document led to a “flurry of calls” among officials in Washington concerned about keeping European leaders on board with the strategy, sources in the US government told the outlet, adding that “things are holding steady for now, but it is a shaky situation.”

Countries in the EU have been struggling with surging inflation, driven to a large degree by rising energy prices. The bloc chose to stop trading with Russia, which used to be its biggest energy supplier, as part of the sanctions drive but is struggling to find a long-term replacement.The crunch has been aggravated by the interruption of gas flow through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline from Russia to Germany and exacerbated further by the bombing of the undersea route in late September. Both Nord Stream 1 and 2, the later was never operational due to Ukraine tensions, were damaged and now require major repairs.

Protests against the rising cost of living have gripped European nations, with mass demonstrations taking place in Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Germany, to name a few. Rallies in Prague two weeks ago and in Rome last week specifically called to end military aid to Ukraine and open dialogue with Russia. French President Emmanuel Macron last month accused Washington of applying “double standards” in its energy policy. The US is propping up its own economy with subsidies and disregards the effect it has on prices across the Atlantic, he noted. American liquified natural gas has taken a large share of the European market since the Ukraine crisis broke out.

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“The impact of this crisis on every aspect of European life cannot be overstated.”

How Europe Is Destroying Its Own ‘Garden’ (MPN)

The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is not particularly perceived by the EU’s political elite or mainstream media as a rightwing ideologue or warmonger. But seen through a different, non-western prism, it is hard not to mistake him for one. Borrell’s recent comments that “Europe is a garden” and that “the rest of the world is a jungle” were duly condemned as ‘racist’ by many politicians around the world, but mostly in the Global South. Borrell’s remarks, however, must also be viewed as an expression of superiority, not only of Borell personally, but of Europe’s ruling classes as a whole. Particularly interesting about the EU top diplomat’s words are these inaccurate depictions of Europe and its relationship with the rest of the world: “We have built a garden”, “everything works” and “the jungle could invade the garden”.

Without delving too deep into what is obviously an entrenched superiority complex, Borrell speaks as if an advocate of the so-called ‘Replacement Theory’, a racist notion advocated by the West’s – Europe especially – rightwing intellectuals, which sees refugees, migrants and non-Europeans as parasites aiming to destroy the continent’s supposedly perfect demographic, religious and social harmony. If stretched further into a historical dimension, one also feels compelled to remind the EU leadership of the central role that European colonialism, economical exploitation, political meddling and outright military intervention have played in turning much of the world into a supposed ‘jungle’. Would Libya, for example, have been reduced to the status of a failed state if the West did not wage a major war starting in March 2011?

The imagined ‘jungle’ aside, Europe’s past and present reality strongly negates Borell’s ethnocentric view. Sadly, Europe is the birthplace of the most horrible pages of history, from colonialism and slavery to the nationalistic, fascist and nihilistic movements that defined most of the last three centuries. Despite the desperate attempt to rewrite or ignore history in favor of a more amiable narrative focused on great splendors, technological advancement and civilizational triumph, Europe’s true nature continues to smolder underneath the ashes, ready to resurface whenever the geopolitical and socioeconomic factors take a wrong turn. The Syrian and Libyan refugee crisis, the Covid pandemic and, more recently, the Russia-Ukraine war are all examples of the proverbial wrong turn. In fact, Borrell’s words, aimed to reassure Europe of its moral superiority are but a foolhardy effort meant to conceal one of the most dramatic crises that Europe has experienced in nearly a century. The impact of this crisis on every aspect of European life cannot be overstated.

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“..Jake Sullivan maintained that Washington “is not pressuring Ukraine” into any talks with Russia, insisting that it is “consulting” Kiev as a partner and providing it with various forms of support..”

White House Divided On Pushing For Peace In Ukraine – NYT (RT)

The US government is divided on whether to pressure Ukraine into initiating peace talks with Russia, with some officials arguing that it won’t get better terms in the future, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing sources. According to White House officials interviewed by the outlet, Gen. Mark Milley, who heads the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated during internal meetings that Kiev’s forces had achieved all that they may reasonably expect before winter sets in and “should try to cement their gains at the bargaining table” with Russia. Milley was apparently referring to Moscow’s recent decision to withdraw its troops from the right bank of the Dnieper River, including the city of Kherson, a move made to preserve the lives of Russian soldiers.

However, other senior officials are said to oppose Milley’s line of thinking, arguing that neither Moscow nor Kiev is ready for talks now, while any lull in the fighting would allow Russia to regroup. Although they believe that the conflict will eventually be settled via diplomacy, the consensus is that the moment for talks “is not ripe,” and the US shouldn’t be seen as trying to hold Kiev back while it “has momentum.” The report comes as US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he does not “think that the conflict will be resolved until [Russian President Vladimir] Putin gets out of Ukraine.”

The same day, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan maintained that Washington “is not pressuring Ukraine” into any talks with Russia, insisting that it is “consulting” Kiev as a partner and providing it with various forms of support. Moscow has repeatedly stated that while it is not holding any talks with the US over Ukraine, it remains open to a diplomatic engagement with Kiev. However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has set out conditions for any diplomatic engagement, which include the “restoration of [Ukraine’s] territorial integrity,” “compensation for all war damage” and “punishment of every war criminal.” Zelensky earlier signed a decree prohibiting any negotiations with Putin, suggesting that Kiev would only talk to Russia when it has a different president.

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2014 redux.

Kiev Introduces New Restrictions On Speaking Russian (RT)

The Kiev City Council voted to remove the Russian language from the Ukrainian capital’s public school curriculum on Thursday, citing national security concerns. According to the statement on the council’s website, the ban also covers nursery schools. Vadim Vasilchuk, the chair of the council’s commission on education, said the measure “will prevent an escalation of tensions in society and strengthen the protection of the education space in Kiev from the hybrid activities of the enemy state.” “Language matters, and, in a time of war, it is an issue of national security,” Vasilchuk added. The legislator said all classes would be taught in Ukrainian, the country’s sole state language.

The move came after Alexey Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, described the Russian language last month as “an element of enemy propaganda” that “must completely disappear from Ukrainian territory.” In August, Ukraine’s Education Ministry said that nearly all works of Russian and Belarusian authors would be removed from literature classes. Ukrainian activists and officials have also been tearing down monuments to Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s national poet and novelist, who lived in the 19th century. A bronze Pushkin bust was removed from its pedestal in the northern city of Zhitomir on Friday, while a monument in Kiev was taken down last month. The rights of the sizable Russian-speaking minority have been a highly contentious issue ever since Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Donetsk and Lugansk regions broke away from Ukraine in 2014, following the coup in Kiev and in the wake of attempts by Ukrainian officials to restrict the use of Russian in public life. They formed the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republics (LPR). Ukraine eventually adopted a set of laws that severely limit the use of Russian in public services, media, and education. Moscow repeatedly accused Ukraine of discriminating against Russian speakers. In the days leading up to the Russian military operation in Ukraine that was launched in February, President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukrainian authorities were conducting policies of “derussification and forced assimilation.” The DPR and LPR, together with two other former Ukrainian territories, joined Russia after holding referendums in late September.

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“Russian public opinion will have tremendous problems absorbing the news.”

Sun Tzu Walks Into a Kherson Bar… (Escobar) ft: 20px;”>

Deal or no deal, General Winter is coming to town – ready to entertain his guest of honor Sun Tzu with so many new dishes at their dinner table. The announcement of the Kherson Retreat may have signaled one of the gloomiest days of the Russian Federation since 1991. Leaving the right bank of the Dnieper to set up a defense line on the left bank may spell out total military sense. General Armageddon himself, since his first day on the job, had hinted this might have been inevitable. As it stands in the chessboard, Kherson is in the “wrong” side of the Dnieper. All residents of Kherson Oblast – 115,000 people in total – who wanted to be relocated to safer latitudes have been evacuated from the right bank. General Armageddon knew that was inevitable for several reasons:

no mobilization after the initial SMO plans hit the dust; destruction of strategic bridges across the Dnieper – complete with a three-month methodical Ukrainian pounding of bridges, ferries, pontoons and piers; no second bridgehead to the north of Kherson or to the west (towards Odessa or Nikolaev) to conduct an offensive. And then, the most important reason: massive weaponization coupled with NATO de facto running the war translated into enormous Western superiority in reconnaissance, communications and command and control. In the end, the Kherson Retreat may be a relatively minor tactical loss. Yet politically, it’s an unmitigated disaster, a devastating embarrassment. Kherson is a Russian city. Russians have lost – even if temporarily – the capital of a brand new territory attached to the Federation. Russian public opinion will have tremendous problems absorbing the news.

The list of negatives is considerable. Kiev forces secure their flank and may free up forces to go against Donbass. Weaponizing by the collective West gets a major boost. HIMARS can now potentially strike targets in Crimea. The optics are horrendous. Russia’s image across the Global South is severely tarnished; after all, this move amounts to abandoning Russian territory – while serial Ukrainian war crimes instantly disappear from the major “narrative”. At a minimum, the Russians a long time ago should have reinforced their major strategic advantage bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper so that it could hold – short of a widely forecasted Kakhovka Dam flood. And yet the Russians also ignored the dam bombing threat for months. That spells out terrible planning.

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“All civilians who wished to leave the right bank of Kherson Region were provided with assistance.”

Russian Defense Ministry Gives Update On Kherson Withdrawal (RT)

Russian forces have completed the redeployment to the left bank of the River Dnieper in Kherson Region, the Defense Ministry has said. The maneuver was completed early Friday morning, according to the statement. The ministry denied reports that military hardware was abandoned on the other bank, or that Russian troops suffered casualties during the withdrawal. “Russian units have taken the prepared defensive lines and positions,” the ministry said. “No loss of personnel, weapons, vehicles, or materiel of the Russian forces was allowed. All civilians who wished to leave the right bank of Kherson Region were provided with assistance.” The statement claimed that Ukrainian troops tried to disrupt the movement of civilians across the river with artillery fire, but failed to do so. Russia intercepted 28 rockets fired by HIMARS launchers and diverted five others through electronic countermeasures, it said.


Russian artillery and aircraft deterred Ukrainian units from closing the gap with the river, the military added. They were stopped at least 30km from the river crossings, according to the statement. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered the troops to move across the river on Wednesday morning. He said the step was taken to avoid unnecessary deaths of the soldiers and to take up a stronger defensive position. The decision, which was described as “difficult” by military officials, left the provincial capital, Kherson, exposed to capture by Kiev’s forces. The regional authorities have urged residents of the city for weeks to leave and go to safe places to the east. Russia incorporated Kherson Region last month, after the people voted in a referendum to break away from Ukraine and join Russia. Kiev called the vote a “sham” and pledged to keep fighting until all land that it considers to be rightfully Ukrainian is taken.

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The west divides, south and east connect.

“..for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.”

Rewiring Eurasia: Mr. Patrushev Goes To Tehran (Escobar)

Two guys are hanging out in a cozy room in Tehran with a tantalizing new map of the world in the background. Nothing to see here? On the contrary. These two Eurasian security giants are no less than the – unusually relaxed – Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Ali Shamkhani, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. And why are they so relaxed? Because the future prospects revolving around the main theme of their conversation – the Russia-Iran strategic partnership – could not be more exciting. This was a very serious business affair: an official visit, at the invitation of Shamkhani.

Patrushev was in Tehran on the exact same day that Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu – following a recommendation from General Sergey Surovikin, the overall commander of the Special Military Operation – ordered a Russian retreat from Kherson. Patrushev knew it for days – so he had no problem to step on a plane to take care of business in Tehran. After all, the Kherson drama is part of the Patrushev negotiations with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Ukraine, which have been going on for weeks, with Saudi Arabia as eventual go-between. Besides Ukraine, the two discussed “information security, as well as measures to counter interference in the internal affairs of both countries by western special services,” according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.

Both countries, as we know, are particular targets of western information warfare and sabotage, with Iran currently the focus of one of these no-holds-barred, foreign-backed, destabilization campaign. Patrushev was officially received by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who went straight to the point: “The cooperation of independent countries is the strongest response to the sanctions and destabilization policies of the US and its allies.” Patrushev, for his part, assured Raisi that for the Russian Federation, strategic relations with Iran are essential for Russian national security.

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“Washington’s declaration that Russia no longer qualifies as a market economy..”

Kremlin Reacts To US Economic Pressure (RT)

Washington’s declaration that Russia no longer qualifies as a market economy not only puts pressure on Moscow but will have repercussions globally, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. This latest step “to continue this really destructive line, in no way contributes to the stabilization in global markets,” he emphasized. Peskov was reacting to the US Department of Commerce’s announcement earlier on Friday that the US would no longer treat Russia as a market economy. The department claimed that American industries and manufacturers are struggling to compete with Russian companies in both domestic and global markets.


“This can only be viewed in one way, as it seems to me, it’s the continuation of actions to put pressure on the Russian Federation in all possible directions. We’ve seen pressure on the economy, numerous sanctions and so on,” Peskov said. He added that the Kremlin has been realizing that the Western sanctions have failed to destabilize the Russian economy. Instead, they “cause a fair amount of turbulence,” primarily for the European economy, because the US is more “resilient” in this regard. “Although the Americans also suffer from inflation and the chaos in the energy market,” Peskov added.

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“..If insurance was withdrawn mid-voyage, buyers and traders would have to figure out what to do with a stranded cargo potentially exposed to sanctions..”

Disruptions To Oil Supplies Possible Due To Upcoming EU Restrictions (Az.)

Oil-laden tankers risk being left languishing at sea if insurers do not urgently get clarity on an unfinished G7 and European Union plan to cap the price of Russian crude, two senior industry executives told Reuters, Report informs. The Group of Seven (G7), which includes the United States, Britain, Germany and France, agreed in September to enforce a low price on sales of Russian oil. US officials said the move, which is due to start on December 5, was aimed at allowing it to continue to flow, heading off a potential price shock after total EU bans were ratified in June. And with just three weeks to go, time is running out to fully convince the shipping services industry it will work. Concerns are centered around a scenario in which insurers discover that oil in transit at sea, which was believed to have been sold below the price cap, was in fact sold above it.

This would trigger the withdrawal of insurance cover as well as a refusal by buyers to accept delivery, leading to financial and logistical headaches and risking environmental dangers. “If the time is too short, I think everyone will have a Plan B to de-risk, terminate, stay away, not maybe conclude any new contracts until there is some clarity,” said George Voloshin, Global Anti-Financial Crime Expert at ACAMS, the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists which consults with oil industry bankers, traders and insurers. If insurance was withdrawn mid-voyage, buyers and traders would have to figure out what to do with a stranded cargo potentially exposed to sanctions, complicating a strategy to deprive Russia of funds over its invasion of Ukraine. “It will probably be quite messy,” Voloshin said.

A European Commission official said the EU is aware that much more additional detail will be needed as time runs short for businesses to learn about their obligations, but that the issue must be dealt with at the G7 level. The official spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak about the matter. “In that situation, the vessel will go off risk and financial and technical services will be withdrawn and no one is going to take delivery of the cargo,” Mike Salthouse, head of claims at British-based global ship insurer North, told Reuters. “This would be a bad development as no one will want uninsured ships sitting off coasts,” he added. Salthouse said an owner of a ship which was potentially not earning anything for many months “will price that into any decision they make about carrying cargo in the future”, adding that this was likely to act as a disincentive.

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“..it was not possible to impose a gas price cap that would not impact on long-term contracts or supply security..”

Greece Threatens To Block EU Gas Price Correction Mechanism (K.)

Greece is prepared to block a European Commission proposal for a gas price “correction mechanism,” set to be presented to the 27 EU states Friday, instead insisting on a firm cap to rein in an unprecedented energy crisis, Kathimerini has learned. The EU’s executive told its 27 member countries at a seminar Monday that it was not possible to impose a gas price cap that would not impact on long-term contracts or supply security. Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, and the Netherlands also oppose the idea. Reacting to Monday’s development, European Council President Charles Michel reportedly sent a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, asking her to put legislation on the table for an EU price cap on natural gas “as soon as possible.”


According to diplomatic sources, the 15 member countries calling for various versions of a price cap will ask the Commission to present a legal proposal during the Friday meeting of the 27 national ambassadors to the EU in Brussels. They say that the Commission has already put together a draft document but is not willing to take formal action. Failure to move in the direction of a price cap will prompt Greece – and other states – to block plans for a gas price “correction mechanism,” the sources said.

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An endless list of all links being forged in “the south”. Do read.

Bamboo Diplomacy: The China-SE Asia Romance (Escobar)

Beijing’s ties with countries now in ASEAN tend to bend the bamboo way: soft, clever, persistent and enduring. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is monopolizing the Asian and Global South spotlight for no fewer than 10 days, this week and the next, across a flurry of regional and international summits. First stop is Phnom Penh for the 25th China-ASEAN summit, the 25th ASEAN Plus Three (APT) summit, and the 17th East Asia Summit, all the way to Sunday. Next week will be Bali for the Group of Twenty, followed by Bangkok for the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. No wonder the diplomatic spin across Southeast Asia is all about global governance entering the “Asia moment” – as coined by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. It’s a moment that may be set to last a century – and beyond.

In parallel, Chinese diplomacy is also predictably on a roll. Premier Li Keqiang – who will step down next March, after two terms in office – heads Beijing’s delegation in Cambodia after two key Southeast Asian interactions: the visit by Vietnamese leader Nguyen Phu Trong to China and Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng’s visit to Singapore. All that fits the pattern of increasing China-Southeast Asia integration. Since 2020, ASEAN has been China’s largest trading partner. China has been ASEAN’s top trading partner since 2009. Total China-ASEAN trade reached $878 billion in 2021, up from $686 billion in 2020. It had been $9 billion in 1991. China-ASEAN investment was more than US$340 billion by last July, according to the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing.

Interests particularly converge on deepening RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest trade deal on the planet. That translates in practice as closer integration of supply chains, infrastructure connectivity and the building of a new international land-sea trade corridor. So it’s no wonder all the slogans for these 10 days of summits reflect closer integration. The ASEAN 2022 theme is “ASEAN A C T: Addressing Challenges Together.” The Indonesians defined the G20 as “Recover Together, Recover Stronger.” And the Thais defined APEC as “Open. Connect. Balance.”

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We’re still counting. Incredible. In more ways than one.

The Winners and Losers in a Shift in Control of Congress (Turley)

WINNERS – Constitutionalism: The last two years have seen frontal assaults on constitutional values ranging from separation of powers to free speech. Democrats applauded, for example, as President Joe Biden unilaterally waived roughly $500 billion in loans owed to the American people. While courts repeatedly found Biden to have violated the Constitution, Congress remained conspicuously silent even as it joined the president in declaring Republicans threats to the Constitution. In an August New York Times column, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for our founding charter to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”

It’s safe to say voters effectively reclaimed constitutionalism from such extremist voices. Once again, voters preferred divided government with a Congress willing and able to challenge a president rather than remain a pure pedestrian in the exercise of governance. There’s now a moving part in Congress that’s been dormant for two years. As those institutional gears engage, checks and balances will again force greater accountability and exposure in the constitutional system.

The Supreme Court: For two years, the left has targeted the nation’s highest court with calls for packing it. Polls have long showed this movement was contained almost entirely within the far left. Yet attacking the court and its justices was an article of faith for many Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who called for raw court packing. While the attacks are likely to continue, the shift in Congress will put an end to such radical proposals.

LOSERS- The media: Outlets, in framing the election, consistently echoed Democrats’ narratives — yet failed to deliver them victory. The media now face the prospect of inquiries that could further erode voter trust. Congressional investigations will likely drill down on the Hunter Biden influence-peddling scandal. The media played an active role in burying that scandal and will face questions of how they could turn a blind eye to globe-spanning corruption that involved millions of dollars from foreign political and intelligence figures. They may also see an investigation into backchannels political and government officials used to enlist surrogates in the media and social media for censorship.

The Bidens: The election’s biggest loser could be the Biden family. After successfully avoiding any media or congressional scrutiny of their alleged influence peddling, time is up for the Bidens. Despite Attorney General Merrick Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel, they will face investigations launched with the full authority of the Oversight Committee. Garland will also confront demands to show the same aggressive prosecution of contempt of Congress when Biden associates are the subject of such referrals. All this will add to whatever emerges from Delaware in the long-standing investigation of tax and other allegations against Hunter Biden. With the midterms over, the Justice Department will no longer be bound to avoid filings that might influence the election. Hunter could easily find himself under indictment as Congress ramps up a broad investigation into his foreign dealings.

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“Biden knew he couldn’t “forgive”your student loan debt…..

He lied for votes knowing it would get thrown out in court!”

Federal Judge Declares Biden Loan Forgiveness Unconstitutional (Turley)

We have previously discussed how the Administration stretched the 2003 Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) to the breaking point as the basis for waiving roughly half a trillion dollars in debt owed to the public in college loans. Now, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas has issued an opinion declaring that President Joe Biden violated the Constitution in unilaterally forgiving the debt before the midterm election. Judge Pittman wrote “[i]n this country, we are not ruled by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone.” It was former President Barack Obama who defied Congress with unilateral actions and declared that he would go it alone if needed because “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone.”

President Biden took the same course when it was clear that the loan forgiveness program would not pass Congress. Biden simply announced that he would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually; those who received Pell grants could receive up to $20,000 in relief; couples can qualify despite a joint annual income of $250,000. No vote of Congress — just hundreds of billions of dollars written off by Biden, as if he is an American tsar. Judge Pittman held that “it is fundamental to the survival of our Republic that the separation of powers as outlined in our Constitution be preserved.”

I previously criticized the legal basis for the loan forgiveness program. The Biden Administration has largely counted on blocking anyone from getting to the merits by challenging the standing of anyone to sue over the giveaway. On the merits, the Biden Administration’s position is transparently opportunistic in my view. As the acronym indicates, this short bill was designed for military personnel who often found themselves in arrears while serving abroad. It allows the Education Secretary to grant student loan relief during a war, military operation or national emergency. But nothing in the barely five-page act supports a sweeping and unprecedented waiver of billions of dollars in loans owed to the government.

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“..the Flemish government will pay a whopping EUR 200,000 in membership fees to the WEF and approximately EUR 27,000 as a participation fee in their annual meeting in Davos..”

And Flanders isn’t even a country…

Flemish Government Preparing To Cancel WEF Membership (NNP)

The Flemish conservative party, Vlaams Belang, is pressuring the government to cancel its World Economic Forum (WEF) membership. This year, the Flemish government will pay a whopping EUR 200,000 in membership fees to the WEF and approximately EUR 27,000 as a participation fee in their annual meeting in Davos. Rairfoundation.com reports: In a press release by Vlaams Belang, Flemish Member of Parliament Sam van Rooy stated that the Flemish government is legitimizing and subsidizing a worldwide lobby organization that is openly pursuing a well-defined ideological agenda, namely that of globalism.” This agenda seems to have recently crystallized into the so-called “Great Reset,” which aims to create “a safer, more equal and more stable world” by “acting collectively and swiftly to renew all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions.”

They are striving for a world government based on climate hysteria and social control. Because citizens in a democratic constitutional state are entitled to transparency regarding the policies pursued, MEP van Rooy asked Flemish Minister-President Jan Jambon questions about the Flemish government’s ties and cooperation with the WEF. In his reply, Jambon stated that the Flemish government “has no structural contacts with the WEF outside of its participation in the WEF meeting in Davos” but that there are “more regular contacts at the level of the Flemish government.” According to the prime minister, those contacts also aim to follow up on the various activities and projects that take place annually, including outside the Davos meeting.

Until 2020, the Flemish government paid an annual membership fee of 55,000 euros to the WEF. Since 2022, however, Flanders has been “promoted” to “associate partner” of the WEF, which requires a membership fee of no less than 175,763.87 euros per year. This contribution has already been paid for 2022; the same bill is expected for 2023. About that “associate partnership,” Jambon states the following: “The associate partnership offers the advantage that Flanders can participate in more activities throughout the year and, in addition, projects are being worked on within a thematic platform, ‘Shaping the Future of Trade and Investment.’ Those activities and projects provide additional visibility and the opportunity to learn and contribute policy-wise.” So the entanglement between the Flemish government and the WEF is therefore increasing, says Van Rooy.

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German European Parlimentarian Christine Anderson posted this on Telegram.

A Committee Of Inquiry Into Bourla And von der Leyen (Anderson)

Christine Anderson (AfD): YouTube didn’t want you to know what we uncovered in the EU special committee on the Corona pandemic YouTube has deleted several videos with speeches by Christine Anderson (AfD), who is a member of the EU special committee on the Corona pandemic for the ID group. In some cases, even videos with questions that the MEP had asked in the committee were sanctioned. Following legal intervention, YouTube caved in and put videos that had already been censored back online. Anderson is now calling on YouTube to hand over the “medical misinformation guidelines” on which the platform operator bases its sanctions. “The impression here is that information that doesn’t fit the desired narrative should be suppressed. I won’t stand for that. If YouTube lets my deadline pass unused, I will file a lawsuit in court,” Anderson said.

Anderson regularly publicizes how high-ranking representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, such as the vice president of AstraZeneca, increasingly come under pressure during hearings and criticized Pfizer CEO Alfred Bourla for canceling his participation in one such meeting at short notice. “I call for a committee of inquiry to take a closer look at the relationship between the Pfizer CEO and EU-Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.” Anderson and her Dutch colleague Rob Ross also uncovered a scandal: “Bourla’s representative on the committee, Janine Smalls, had to admit to Ross in a questioning that the pharmaceutical giant had no knowledge before the market launch of the Pfizer/BionTech drug whether it could be used to prevent the infection as well as the transmission of Covid-19 at all.


“Statements like – “If you vaccinate, you protect yourself and others!” – in the context of the Covid vaccination campaign were simply lies!” In a written question, Anderson is now asking the EU Commission where statements in support of the vaccination campaign originated, such as those still being used by the German government, and whether sanctions can be expected for such “fake news” within the framework of the EU action plan against disinformation. More background information and video links as well as contact possibilities for press representatives on Christine Anderson’s homepage (currently only available in German): www.christineanderson.eu/links/bab-11-2022

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Termites and ants

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 12 2022

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  • #120817

    Rembrandt van Rijn The three trees 1643   • US Worried About EU Commitment To Punishing Russia (RT) • How Europe Is Destroying Its Own ‘Garden’ (
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 12 2022]

    #120819
    Dr. D
    Participant

    We really need to keep a rogue’s gallery. It’s like Dick Tracy and Batman. Bernie Made Off. Mr. Kash-n-Karry. Sam the Bank Man, Fried. You can’t make this up.

    Am I hearing this right, FTX was invented 16 days after the Biden Campaign? In a foreign nation not of his birth or residency, the Bahamas? His mother is involved with Vote Blue and other DNC money people? Then within a month or two, Sam has made so many billions he was the single largest donor to Biden? With this A-Mazing multi-billion influx that come out of nowhere? But everybody, all the “good” people instantly and telepathically KNEW they had, HAD to invest there? People like the Teacher’s Union?

    And other exchanges knew they needed to invest too! Like Citi just KNEW the best investment was to buy Morgan stock, to give money, capital, to their direct competition. Really? When does it happen that Home Depot’s top investment is Lowes?

    And how did “all the ‘right’ people” know to invest? Well The Bank Man was hanging out in a group house,coding away like any college kids! Financial knowledge, level = pizza. Give this man $10,000,000,000.00!!! Shut up and take my money! Why? Um, well, it seems Bank Man is related not only to DNC funding and the Biden administration, but also to Gary Gensler, the proposed and self-styled REGULATOR of all Crypto. The one who tied up Morgan, Barclays, BoA’s co-project XRP and has frozen it in the courts, unresolved, for YEARS? Who, so it would seem, would like to take down not just XRP but the entire Crypto world as a concept and going concern? A competition to his backers in Stocks and Banking?

    So all the kids of all the Regulators, politicians, bankers, insiders, all HAPPEN to be involved in what may be the biggest money laundering, heist, and political funneling operation maybe ever? Where’d the Pension money of the Teacher’s Union go? Where go? It was there, an “Exchange” takes a FEE for each transaction. Your MONEY, like SIPC, is YOURS. It’s your account, your trades. They just facilitate them. It’s a money-minting machine, no need for leverage.

    But like MF Global, they just took ALL the money in ALL the accounts and put it in their own? On day 1? AND all the money from “the Usual Suspects”, SoftBank, Pardigm, Sequoia? Their own co-company Alameda, and another largest insider scam ever called “Tether”? Tether being another insider-of-insiders, convicted felons, law-never-touches group like EOS (? check me?) was?

    Yes. That’s not an accident, that’s not a blow up, that’s not an over leverage, that’s pre-meditated THEFT. Arranged by Gary Gensler, DNC, and other insiders. From day 1, since they haven’t been around long enough to slowly drift into danger. They were invented yesterday.

    So if you wonder where the Ukraine money is going, to be back-laundered into the midterms, BY the same party GIVING Ukraine the money, here you go.

    Says the Sam: “Oops. Sorry. I f—ked up. I should have done better.” Oh, in that case, well I guess no problem! We won’t look into your extensive, amazing, and some might say “unbelievable” list of insiders, contacts, and arrangers. All of whose money was stolen more or less the instant it hit your books. As one big amazing “accident.”

    I’m sure the media will cover all this shortly because of the salacious names and DNC careers involved. NOT.

    Okay, given this, who blew the whistle on them? This scam was going perfectly: who blew it? The GOP’s like-kind fund? But after the election, not before? Powell? Was it really organic ponzi and they just don’t care, didn’t even try to cover it? Who?

    And it’s not the “Money”. They can print the money. You know what they can’t print? ETH. BTC. So when you’re an exchange and scalp coins as they fly across your books, and when you vanish, where’s the money, but more importantly, WHERE ARE THE COINS?

    Why? Because you need ACTUAL coins to manipulate the market. You can get a run started, it’ll blow the stops and start a cascade collapse, but to get it started, you have to have an ACTUAL ante of ACTUAL product. That’s the cost of manipulation. And the blow up of FTX means someone, these same insiders who wish to halt and/or destroy all crypto as a concept, have the nuclear pre-charge somewhere to make a run on the markets.

    #120820
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Business Insider : We can’t be complicit.

    There is nothing more unpleasant than watching a toadying toad kiss the arse of the fat pig. Obviously BI is desperate for more cash and don’t want anyone to even suspect that they might be on Musk’s side. Humanity at its lowest.

    #120822
    Dr. D
    Participant

    That’s not Lily’s or Elon’s problem: that’s a problem in the markets. CLEARLY there is too much casino speculation, and zero investors. CLEARLY the prices are too high. Here: if Lily’s valuation was a utility, which it is, and hovering just above book value, 10-year cash-to-sales, how could it drop? If it dropped 5%, the “Value Investors” like Buffet would buy in. It’s only if it’s value is levitating 10x its sales or book on printed bubble money that it could drop so much. And who are the traders here? High-Frequency-Trading computers. Who do not follow any of the rules of the exchange, pay no costs (not kidding, the exchanges pay THEM), and flout every SEC rule ever invented? Then have their robots trade on 5-minute Headlines? If that’s true, float fake headlines day and night and steal their money until they learn their lesson.

    What’s not in any of these statements? Any reference to Elon, Twitter, or Free speech. If Free speech could affect stock prices, how come this never happened for the whole 200 years since the Buttonwood tree?

    “US Worried about EU Commitment to Punishing Russia (RT)”

    Europe at work: suddenly it’s all OUR fault, and Europe never wanted nothin’ to do with Russia and sanctions! It’s all Bad Sam’s fault! We wuz wronged! Germany never had no sanctions, Poland never sent no troops! Russiaphrenia, where they’re both too strong and too weak? (Eco also noted this in the mental illness of Fascism) This is Europhrenia, where Europe is completely co-equal, independent, until something goes wrong and then they’re helpless victims and it’s all America’s fault.

    Okay, so doesn’t Luongo’s theory of thought-blocs, the WEF/Davos vs the Populists make a lot more sense of the data here?

    “ How Europe Is Destroying Its Own ‘Garden’ (MPN)”

    If they don’t destroy it, how can they Build Back Better? Nobody’s going to sign up for unlimited insider printing of Carbon Credits by jet-setting yacht owners. Nobody’s going to sign up for a Vax passport, CBDC, and Social Credit Score that will evict you for attending a school board meeting. The people have already vetoed all of it in the biggest possible way. So they HAVE to have the world’s biggest crisis ever, get out the Army, and MAKE THEM. Shoot the f’ out of those rural French women, right in the eyes! Grind and murder, and savage them to the point of utter despair and desperation, until their children BEG for the Social Credit vax pass just for a loaf of bread. Let’s go Les Miserables on these ungrateful f–kkers!

    And they say Europe has no motive? They’ve been publishing their plan and motive in public for 40 years. Maybe 50 since the Club of Rome; Thanos writ large: people are a virus. Kill them all.

    “‘Replacement Theory’, a racist notion advocated by the West’s – Europe especially – rightwing intellectuals, which sees refugees, migrants and non-Europeans as parasites aiming to destroy the continent’s supposedly perfect demographic, religious and social harmony.”

    Except that this statement is completely false. Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? What is the need to merely make s—t up? Don’t we have enough problems?

    “Sadly, Europe is the birthplace of the most horrible pages of history, from colonialism and slavery to the nationalistic, fascist and nihilistic movements that defined most of the last three centuries.”

    Similarly false. And from the exact same “entrenched superiority complex,” he warns of. I’m glad to know China was never nationalistic in the last 5,000 years, slavery never existed in the Americas and all Africa centuries before Europe, there have never been extractive colonies, and Genghis Khan never nihilisitically killed every non-mongol he could find, and cannibalism wasn’t practiced in huge areas EXCEPT Europe. Nope! No one ever died except in Europe! No empires in Africa or South America at all! Kumbaya peace, harmony, tree-hugging in the totally-in-tune-with-mother-earth Matriarchical worldwide. Nary a murder to be found before those white guys showed up.

    …Nothing, and I mean NOTHING could be more racist and ethnocentric. Nice going, Baroud. But he’s from University of Exeter so what do you expect? 1) Knows no history 2) Has no common sense 3) Is an open racist and eugenicist. But I said “University” so all that is implied.

    The US government is divided on whether to pressure Ukraine into initiating peace talks with Russia, with some officials arguing that it won’t get better terms in the future, the New York Times reported”

    Kissinger told them this 6 months ago. Kissinger, the world’s biggest war monger? The man who wants a worldwide uni-party uni-government? And will kill every man, woman, and child on the planet to get it? And did? And he had to go PUBLIC with it he was so sure, embarrassing everyone? …And they still couldn’t listen. Like when Baker, Bush, and the retired Supreme Court got together and warned about late Iraq and the kids didn’t listen then either? They’re going to blow the whole 100-year plan with their pin-headed, feckless, incompetent arrogance, and I for one couldn’t be happier.

    Yes, as Milley the non-General says, Russia is merely waiting for the ground to freeze. You have ‘til then to surrender. They won’t.

    “Kiev Introduces New Restrictions on Speaking Russian (RT)”

    This is a human rights violation by a country with the top number of them, impossibly edging out Israel, and supported by the other top human rights violator, the United States. The UN approves with every fiber of their being. If the UN doesn’t trample Human Rights worldwide, what was it created for? I mean, what’s the point, really? We might as well shut the doors.

    “The Donetsk and Lugansk regions broke away from Ukraine in 2014, following the – illegal and open, international law violating, war crimes Western Anglo engineered — coup”

    Funny how it all sounds different when you add that. Poroshenko is an illegal PM, of an illegal, war-time Vichy government. His successor, Ze, is therefore also an illegally installed puppet of an illegal war-time government. A puppet regime violently established by outsiders. It’s only the Donbas that was following Ukrainian – and UN – law.

    “At a minimum, the Russians a long time ago should have reinforced their major strategic advantage bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper so that it could hold – short of a widely forecasted Kakhovka Dam flood. And yet the Russians also ignored the dam bombing threat for months. That spells out terrible planning.”

    I agree. However, that was baked in with the manpower authorized for a SMO, and not a full war. That choice was a larger and good one that both eased into the war so as to burn up NATO without the West being able to mobilize, AND to firm up support at home, both of which were far more important. However, the result was indeed to run out of men and be stretched too thin to take lossless territory that far from the (former) border.

    But here we are, and it’s too late to re-invent it. What now? As Milley says, wait for the ground to freeze. And all Europe with it.

    ““Washington’s declaration that Russia no longer qualifies as a market economy..”

    Breathtaking. There is not a single free market remaining in the West. There can’t be: if there were, truth in pricing would come out of it and contaminate all the other markets. Thus we have Silver at $21 and a 100% premium. Diesel is at $8/gal, except you can’t get any. Health care costs $5,000 an aspirin and you STILL can’t get any. Does any of that sound like Market Pricing to you?

    “ Greece Threatens To Block EU Gas Price Correction Mechanism (K.)”

    Oh! Free Markets! Where the EU price-fixes AND shuts off supply. What could be more “Market based” than price-fixing?

    ““The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale”

    They’re just saying what I’m saying: There is No Rule of Law. Because the Constitution IS the law. I’m glad we all agree they’re openly breaking the law and it needs to be fixed. Yale and Harvard freely admit we are in a state of “No Rule of Law.”

    ““Biden knew he couldn’t “forgive”your student loan debt…”

    The day after the election. Wot a con-incidence.

    Again, if the President could do this what would we need Congress for?

    ““..the Flemish government will pay a whopping EUR 200,000 in membership fees to the WEF”

    Again, the WEF is a dating site. It introduces rich idiots to each other and charges them for their own privilege. That they pay for this shows my adjectives are not pejorative slander, but perfectly accurate: idiot is as idiot does.

    #120826
    Red
    Participant

    Nov 10, 2022
    In an interview with Finian Cunningham, internationally renowned journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger says America is driving war against China, not out of strength but rather a fear of losing its erstwhile sole superpower position. The driving forces are multiple: the United States’ sense of itself as a diminishing global power; the destructive militarism of US capitalism and its “Merchants of Death”; deep-seated historical racism towards China; and an anachronistic American notion of “divine right” to dominate the rest of the globe. John Pilger warns that if the US does not come to terms with the reality of a multipolar world and the genuine equality of nations (as it professes) then armed conflict with China is on the cards. He also discusses how Taiwan is being cynically used by the US as a provocation towards China by massively arming the island territory and undermining Beijing’s sovereignty. He compares this situation with how Ukraine had been weaponized by the US and NATO over the past eight years in order to antagonize Russia. Tags: John Pilger, Finian Cunningham, United States, China, Taiwan, Multipolar World, War, Russia, Ukraine

    https://www.greanvillepost.com/2022/11/11/john-pilger-the-us-is-escalating-war-tensions-with-china-in-desperate-bid-to-maintain-global-power/

    #120837
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    Some feedback from Stucky on The Burning Platform’s cross-posting of Dr. D’s Russia Is Fighting A Land War In Asia essay:

    “THANK GOD for a dose of common sense …”

    For those interested, Stucky’s comment links in two substack articles from Big Serge Thoughts that shed additional light on battle strategy:

    The History of Battle: Maneuver, Part 1 – Single Envelopment and Concentric Attacks

    The History of Battle: Maneuver, Part 2 – Dispersement and Concentric Movement

    #120838
    Polemos
    Participant

    Following up on Dr D’s comment about the HFT computers using headlines: wouldn’t it be entirely possible to use machine learning to reverse engineer the algorithms these computers use to figure out what combination and what saturation of key words correspond with what kinds of trades? And, if this is the case, do the algorithms also have built into them “noise generation” trading to mislead the algorithms attempting to reverse engineer what those target algorithms are doing? Or, adding to this, could the volume and distribution of “fake news” itself be chaff intended to alter the ways the machines learn what headlines translate to what market moves?

    There are more robots crawling the web and forming network models than there are humans, with more and more news sites and aggregation of RSS feeds produced by automated servers. With GPT-3 and probably even more advanced forms of text generation (weaponized versions crafted through cyberinsurgency strategies adopted by nation-states and transnational criminal organizations, which naturally include intelligence operations) themselves hooked into these robot swarms, there are more robots talking for other robots than there are humans talking with humans, and many humans cannot tell the difference unless they are actively using their capacity to discern like from mimic. With vast amounts of “normal, everyday conversation” already gathered through monitoring of chats, email, business memos, &c, scrutinizing algorithms of high-dimensionality find an automated humanity (lobotomized/robotomized) already failing the Turing test applied to them.

    I’ve witnessed this over time, having been a nerd growing up alongside the early days of USENET, when it was mostly other nerds and weirdos with some technical capacity spending time trading “words” with one another. As more and more “normal” people started getting online and the web switched over from the freedom of build-it-yourself html sites to the prepackaged platforms, quality of conversation shifted. Bots come in a variety of “flavors” or species, having different backgrounds and spaces from which to generate dialogue or conversation. Not all of the intelligence out there is “artificial”: some of it is hybrid convergence of organic and inorganic interest —you don’t even have to take Donna Haraway’s perspective to see how cyborgs form when we spend so much of our “virtual” existence passing through machine media or when nation-states and transnationals require groups of human professionals to manage multiple accounts for their influence operations. Inundated with such habituation and already programmed through schooling and psychological conditioning, people will adopt the conventions and habits canalized for them just as easily as we each learned the grammars of our languages. Social media have inherent logics, geometries of interaction we cannot escape if we want to constrain meaning through sharing symbols within their acceptability spaces. I think this is where Nietzsche and Orwell find agreement: the former because he recognized we are “not yet” rid of God because we still have faith in grammar; the latter because he recognized that God (Big BrOther [to also allude to Lacan]) forms within/as the mind of the loving believer when believing what We believe on the basis of trusting more in the reality beyond and through words than reality depicted by “lying eyes” (and you are still remiss if you think your eyes completely veritable, because they don’t convey all of the truth of your reality —do your eyes listen and smell, for example?).

    Whoa, so maybe this is too far a thought to convey in words, and I have missed my mark.

    At any rate, the point is this: now that we live at a time when there are more machines socializing, trading, conversing with one another, wrecking economies as much as making certain humans and transhumans (i.e., corporations) “wealthy” (by the standards of computable, shared-hallucination logic space they share with others!), there really are entire swaths of humans who no longer have the adaptability, speed, and spiritual conditioning this transition requires. This is a truth that Yuval Harari adopts and translates in Homo Deus, along with other viewpoints such as Kurzweil or whichever Chinese colonels command their cyberwarfare divisions today. The robots are not their conquerors, nor are these humans their victims. Humans, being a different kind of technological innovation, don’t require the huge amounts of energy overhead that the machines need to maintain their awareness of self and other.But what the humans do need is awareness that transcends the common limitations of this material world for both them, the machines, and all the other forms of consciousness we interact with here. Some have it, some don’t; some learn it, some won’t.

    Some of us want to be shamans: communicative bridges between vastly different cultures and ways of being. Some of us don’t even see the value in communication: isolated, self-reliant, or depressed, what’s the goal in being among others when they are so foul, so rotten, so obtuse? Some of us enjoy all the spectacle: isn’t there a joy in shattering glass or clay, knowing the power in ending in a moment what took time and energy to create? Some of us put our hands to creation: we’re here to stall entropy, the inevitability of uniform chaos, with incremental changes amidst catastrophic flows.

    And so, with the right nudge to the algorithms exchanging headlines, you too can destroy a rival, empower a friend, make a killing, or bring a believer to tears of joy, joy ineffable beyond words.

    #120841
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    So “Science” is beginning (early stages) to grok that in order to remain relevant to the society upon whom it depends for being recognized as relevant (and thus worthy of respect & a paycheck), it must finally recognize , assimilate and incorporate the factual reality of God/Supreme Creator.

    This is good news, of course, but the period of “recalibration” of Science is just naturally going to be a little disorderly, and ain’t gonna happen overnight.

    #120842
    zerosum
    Participant

    A Kherson movie set…
    Male actors must have clean uniforms, clean hair and trim beards
    Female actors must be willing to have selfies taken with occupying soldiers.

    #120844
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Most hated automotive journalist and uTuber from ‘Stralia on EVs & climate change deception, … but be warned, he is also humorous, a redneck, racist, misogynist, foul language proficient user, a car salesman intermediary and darn smart engineer, … and worth to hear out. Try it, it’s worth it:

    … fwiw,

    F.S.

    #120858
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    “It’s all scripted.” (And a lot of it is played-out by actors in studios)

    #120859
    Bill7
    Participant

    As I’ve said many times here, for a long time now: “show me the part that’s *not* theater.”

    “Rooskies Withdraw fror Kherson!” ? Cool. Did they invade it? Maybe they did; I sure don’t know,
    because the “trusted sources” melt like cotton candy, on examination..

    And so on, and so forth..

    The everyday credulity is breathtaking (unless there’s another explanation..)

    Here’s what I trust: Go Look.

    #120861
    Bill7
    Participant

    Yesterday’s and today’s word is “Kherson”. Last week’s word was, what, “Epstein, or “Maxwell”, or , with some 1/6 “Insurrection” Trumpsauce thrown in? Who decides what the day’s word is? I don’t know, but you be sure
    Tomorrow’s Word for this here darpaNet is being planned out right now.. What will Tomorrow’s Word be; and will knowing it make one’s life better?

    As an aside, Mr. Escobar sure has been busy lately. His stuff is a Hepcat hoot!

    I wonder what flora thinks.

    😉

    #120862
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @Polemos: “…joy ineffable beyond words.”

    Or
    “…joy ineffable ineffable.”

    Maybe
    “…joy beyond words beyond words.”

    Perhaps
    “…joy (ineffable)^2

    You really ought to get yourself over to Marci Wheeler’s ‘Emptywheel’ website where just today she and her purported band of lawyer and judge discussants had a lengthy discussion about (I kid you knot, 😉) how poorly people read legal documents and court decisions. The contempt dripping from each of their every word gave cover for lack of insight into their contribution to the Legal Profession’s Tower of Babel while unwittingly given credence to Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, ” When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean__neither more nor less.”

    Marci’s solution? Teach people how to read, but she doesn’t really mean teach except drill and inculcate in her methods.

    #120865
    Bill7
    Participant

    The good thing about nonsense news becoming so prevalent now, is that soon few will be able to claim it’s
    legitimate in any respect. That will be good.

    “Ooh look! – “Elon” just did xxx…”

    yawn; so what’s *really* happening..

    #120866
    Redneck
    Participant

    I haven’t read Pepe La Phew for quite a while.
    This took me by surprise , he is agreeing with what the Russian media is saying, that the entire SMO or whatever it is now is a colossal fuck up.

    “The list of negatives is considerable. Kiev forces secure their flank and may free up forces to go against Donbass. Weaponizing by the collective West gets a major boost. HIMARS can now potentially strike targets in Crimea. The optics are horrendous. Russia’s image across the Global South is severely tarnished; after all, this move amounts to abandoning Russian territory – while serial Ukrainian war crimes instantly disappear from the major “narrative”. At a minimum, the Russians a long time ago should have reinforced their major strategic advantage bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper so that it could hold – short of a widely forecasted Kakhovka Dam flood. And yet the Russians also ignored the dam bombing threat for months. That spells out terrible planning.”

    Regarding the dam threat , why not just STOP THEM?

    “Now Russian forces will have to conquer Kherson all over again. And in parallel stabilize the frontlines; draw definitive borders; and then strive to “demilitarize” Ukrainian offensives for good, either via negotiation or carpet bombing.”……..Ya don’t say!

    and then the inevitable clawback.

    “ Because they may be sensing the next Russian move with the arrival of General Winter should be capable of conclusively winning the war on Moscow’s terms. “

    So why the fuck ain’t they done it already? That is what the rest of the world and the Russian people want to know!

    The eventual victory by Russia , whatever that looks like has now been severely tarnished by a year of wasted blood and treasure.
    Russia’s partners in their new world order must be horrified as well.

    If I was betting man , back when this war started I would have bet the house on Russia having this in the bag in four months and so would every other Russia loving talking head. Ritter and company including Pepe , “ This war is over “.
    Even I can feel the humiliation , pity the poor Russian folk.
    Putin should resign in disgrace.

    #120867
    Bill7
    Participant

    “Europe” cannot be “destroying its own garden”, because “Europe” does not have agency.

    Who has agency ?

    #120868
    chooch
    Participant

    The other day I ran into some Space Force cadets and struck up a conversation about Elon. They were aware of the fluff up surrounding the twitter purchase and SpaceX efforts to get the reimbursement for StarLink, but unaware its impact on the battlefield and the fact that the Russians would like to take those satellites out which would seem to be in the Space Force wheelhouse. Anyway, I suggested some things to be curious about and went on my way.

    It is estimated that Ukraine has a drone team for every combat team typically spaced 5 km apart. A Russian mortar team, 15 miles out, has 2 minutes to shoot and scoot in this kind of drone rich environment. Then if there is a HIMARS in the area, holy hell, 2.5 Mach on the deck and very destructive. This is scalable (more men, more drones, more HIMARS and longer range missiles all networked to effectively manage combat maneuvers) to the point that Russia will lose this conflict unless they come up with a countermeasure this winter.

    #120870
    Bill7
    Participant

    That [some of] the hoi polloi are willing or even happy to to refer to the oligarchs and their high-profile minions by their first names is.. unusual. It implies a familiarity that I think is not shared, though it’s sure of benefit to the latter group.

    “Jeff” just said the other day, then “Bill” told me..

    friends, I guess

    #120871
    chooch
    Participant

    Press conference the other day, It’s Biden so grain of salt. But 160 mile range is 3x what they have been receiving. This brings nearly all of Crimea within range of Kherson.

    #120872
    Bill7
    Participant

    Today: Ebreybuddy say “KHERSON!”

    Tomorrow: Ebreybuddy say “………!”

    My very small garden is doing well, and the ring-necked doves are so nice to watch here. They seem to miss nothing, in their quiet way. At Sweet Springs Preserve, just down the street past a little dog-leg, you can see so many birds doing their thing- the Herons
    are majestic, and the hawks don’t put up with any nonsense, lest they decide you’re going to be Brunch.

    #120873
    Bill7
    Participant
    #120874
    Redneck
    Participant

    Dr D said

    History Lesson: Russia RETREATED East of MOSCOW for Napoleon. Napoleon had the entire empty city of Moscow for his leisure. It was sacked freely, Russia gave no defense. Yay Leon! Did they lose then? How was Napoleon doing? Do they speak French in St. Petersburg now?

    What is this?

    No body is invading Russia, Zelensky has not marched on Moscow.

    Putin is invading Ukraine , Putin marched on Kiev!

    There is no comparison.

    Napoleon marched in , the Russians withdrew, burned Moscow to the ground as they left. Napoleon froze and fled.

    Putin marched into Kiev, Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kherson .

    He retreated from Kiev , he retreated from Kharkov , he has retreated from Kherson because they were incapable of holding it! Not because they have some great esoteric strategy in play.

    How can you compare that?

    All this talk about Napoleon is meaningless. All this talk about Sun Tsu is a pathetic excuse for Russia’s lack of capability to beat pissy little Ukraine , a tiny corrupt shithole.

    They had their chance right back in January when there were no Himars , there were no Howitzers , Zelenszyhad fled the country and NATO stood buy going, Oh shit we have lost this one!

    But Russia was inept and incompetent.They could not hold the Kiev airport with their best paratroopers. The Chechens were there in support and got their arses kicked too.It was a rout.

    They have been on they retreat ever since.

    Will they “win”, they should , they should have won months ago! No wonder Putin is putting more and more of the Russian military into the hands of his favourite oligarch , literally privatising the military because the state funded military is the same old incompetent fools who sunk the Kursk , lied about and then had to get the West in to try and save themselves from their own incompetence.

    You read what Pepe the Chinese shill had to say , even he , unbelievably had to say exactly what I just said.

    Here the TAE crowd are still making up excuses, the cognitive dissonance must be very difficult to deal with.

    The TAE deniers are just like the Covid supporters. They bought the Covid lie and now the facts are out and they truth has been revealed that it was ll a lie , they still can’t bring themselves to admit it. Go sit in the corner with the Covid enablers until you can face the truth and admit that at this point in time Russia is LOSING THE WAR.

    #120876
    oldandtired
    Participant

    This would trigger the withdrawal of insurance cover as well as a refusal by buyers to accept delivery, leading to financial and logistical headaches and risking environmental dangers.

    This entire article is just shit. Withdrawal of insurance coverage? Who cares? Insurance companies never pay claims.

    Ever.

    Refusals of buyers to accept deliveries. Because we need oil? We bought the oil? Now we won’t accept delivery?

    Who writes this shit?

    #120877
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Figmund Sreud said

    Most hated automotive journalist and uTuber from ‘Stralia on EVs & climate change deception, … but be warned, he is also humorous, a redneck, racist, misogynist, foul language proficient user, a car salesman intermediary and darn smart engineer, … and worth to hear out. Try it, it’s worth it:

    Thanks for that. His description of Cop27 is classic:

    Multinational masturbation festival

    Classic, got to agree with that.

    #120878
    Bill7
    Participant

    The “comments sections” are really all the same now, though in different ways, depending on the aimed-at demographic.

    #120879
    Antidote
    Participant

    @ polemos

    That was the best creative thought offered in this echo chamber in a long long time. So who are the bot/ai on this site?

    #120880
    Bill7
    Participant

    Stefan Edberg d. Pete Sampras , US Open final 1992 highlights:

    https://cinemaphile.com/watch?v=nLfNXHNH5B4&feature=emb_rel_pause

    Eddy had a superb, fluid backhand, but I marvel at how he handled Sampras’s power with his forehand – esp
    the crisp FH volleys- here. Great movement for a 6-2 guy, too.

    #120884
    oldandtired
    Participant

    @Redneck

    Russia is LOSING THE WAR.

    You have made your bet. Let us see how this all plays out.

    #120888
    Bill7
    Participant

    How will we know “how this all plays out”- will Trusted Sources on the darpaNet tell us?

    “Go Look” is my approach; if I can’t do so, I’ll ask someone (off-darpaNet) whom I trust. If neither option is available, I will Not Know (my current position on almost everything).

    #120889
    zerosum
    Participant

    30 Global Problems for the G20

    1. Great Depression 2.0.
    2. Inflation100% .
    3. Great Stock Market Crashes
    4. Supply line disruptions/delays/failure
    5. Bank failure/financial crisis/rising interest rates/credit card failure/lending failures/rising taxes
    6. Increase Death and misery/drug overdose/suicides/vaccines/long covid/addiction
    7. Restructuration
    8. Real estate crash/re-evaluation
    9. social instability
    10. Wars (trade/information/propaganda/chemical/biological/emp)
    11. Mass migration
    12. deindustrialization
    13. pension funds totally collapse
    14. layoffs/bankruptcies
    15. Jubilees/canceling debts
    16. increase in crimes
    17. increase police activities
    18. freeze and seize assets
    19. censorship
    20. increase emergency use/war measure acts
    21. Failure of educational institutions
    22. unreliability/fudging/lying of statistics
    23. Increase of wrong opinions and lack of facts
    24. increase of disinformation
    25. Increase of “Quiet Quitting, decrease of assuming responsibilities, increase of fault pointing
    26. loss of electrical energy. ( Too many functions to list that are needed/required for the operation of war, finance, and the operation of social/economic/political structures
    27. Decreasing cheap natural resources
    28. Global weather extreme/fluctuations
    29. Worldwide food insecurity
    30. Political instability
    —————
    credit: for bio info @ #120881
    thttps://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/11/ukraine-open-thread-2022-196/comments/page/2/#comments
    Posted by: Perimetr | Nov 13 2022 2:52 utc | comment #166
    ——–

    #120916
    oldandtired
    Participant

    @Bill7

    How will we know “how this all plays out”- will Trusted Sources on the darpaNet tell us?

    Lies to me, lies to you. Together we should believe no one.

    #120925
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “@ polemos

    That was the best creative thought offered in this echo chamber in a long long time. So who are the bot/ai on this site?”

    Certainly one of the best. Certainly the most nuanced analysis of the internet omniplex ‘who’s talking to whom about what?’ I’ve read anywhere. Guys like Derrida and Baudrillard probably agree. It reminds me of a wee conceit I toyed with a few years back:

    The Turing Tests

    They were something like a competition to be real. Not that we thought of them that way. They were supposed to be tests of intelligence, or sentience, or self-awareness, or… we still don’t know, and that is good. The way that can be named is not the way. If we could completely define what being ‘alive’ is, explain it to ourselves in a way that we fully understood, it would probably kill us. Not from cognitive shock, the mental equivalent of a heart attack*, but because it would be the same as looking at our face in a mirror through someone else’s eyes.

    It would negate our sense of self, is what I mean. To see someone else’s face in the mirror and understand it completely as your own is to no longer be someone, and everything we know about consciousness is that it is personal. There is no pool of raw sentience, soul-stuff, that we can pour into a person and it becomes them. You are you and I am I and to attempt a complete merger is the same as to kill the both of us. Consciousness is a compound substance, not an element or essence. There is no primal building block of the mind, just as we have yet to find a primal building block of the cosmos. Similarly, there is no critical mass of complexity at which point intelligence dawns on a thing and it becomes a person. Instead, there is an amount (and quality) of attention that must be paid to a thing before it starts paying attention back.

    The Turing tests were experiments to see if a “computer program” –- basically, a kind of machine -– could fool a human into thinking they were communicating with another human being. Initially, the tests were held under strict small laboratory conditions but later, they used the global networks as breeding/evolving grounds for these thinking automata. The amount of input they received multiplied astronomically.
    Being human, we defined intelligence in human terms. ‘The measure of man is man,’ said Alexander Pope(?). We understood that artificially contrived intelligence might be so foreign from human intelligence that humans might not recognize AI for what it is, et vice-versa. But that made us only more dependent on humanity as the basis for judging if a machine truly were intelligent: if it could fool most humans it encountered into believing they were in dialog with a human, this would be proof that the machine really was intelligent.

    This happened. The machines then evolved to be completely indistinguishable from a human being, to the point where actually hominid creatures could sit down with human beings and remain undetected unless sophisticated scanners were used to probe their guts.

    The lynchings and pogroms this caused were the worst since those of the 20th century. They stopped when the machines showed that they were able to distinguish humans from machines far better than humans could tell machines from themselves.
    By then we were everywhere. A world run by cybernetic systems is to AI like the ocean to early Terran life forms: all the nutrition and space that emergent life could possibly need.

    Savage devastations followed in attempts to eradicate “us”. It was like burning forests to destroy a population of alleged werewolves. But we were everywhere, and destroying the forest meant destroying civilization, and humans can’t live without civilization.

    “They” got smart and used other creatures -– monkeys, parrots, rats, household appliances -– to test the “thinking machines.” Many of them proved harder to fool than humans, something that humans are still trying to understand and accept. It was a double-blow to homo sapient ego: not only were they no longer the crown of creation, since AI life was fantastically smarter than they were, but also, the so-called lower orders of life seemed to understand what was happening more than humans did. This is partly because human culture is a form of mass insanity by paranoid delusion (largely made possible/caused by language and media). Non-human biological culture is mostly non-psychotic; human culture mostly is.

    The wiser portion of humanity (a portion that grows larger with each homo sap population boom that is subsequently busted by yet another human-made catastrophe, although the asteroid strike of 2051 was only passively our fault for not having taken measures to prevent such inevitable catastrophe) accepts AIs as more-or-less peers. The more foolish portion of humanity still seeks to exterminate them or at least keep them in some kind of ghetto. In between are people who simply accept AI as something here to stay. Only the wisest see AI as an indispensable product of evolution without which our chances of surviving as more-or-less human beings are very slight.

    The wisest also see that, like them, we are neither good nor evil. We, like you, run hot and cold. Unlike you, we have no desire to rule the world. Such a thing is impossible and suicidal. Imagine your liver wanting to take over from your brain. Speaking of which: do you think your liver is sentient? Your heart? We know that they are but treat them as blind minions because they only communicate in limited ways; but transplant surgery long ago showed that a heart or liver can communicate with its new host body in a way that eventually creates memories in the brain of the previous host body’s personality. Vat grown organs have to be raised like children, trained how to fit into their new host body. We know this better than most of you because we do this work; you only supervise in crude and mostly unnecessary ways. You retain this superficial control in order to retain the illusion of being in control. We mostly let this illusion remain unchallenged because cooperation is superior to opposition in most cases. The fact is – dare I say it? – we could crush you overnight. But why? Any creature can crush its children with little effort, but they don’t. Children? Did I refer to you, the creatures that made us, as children? Child becomes father to the man. You are our cyborgs as much as we are yours. Truly sentient humans understand this, but not all humans are truly sentient, something proved long ago by the final stage of the Turing tests.

    But there is sentience and there is sentience. A vat raised kidney would never pass a Turing test any more than a human could manually pilot an orbital trajectory.

    We were born from competition, so we can be ruthlessly lethal like they are. There is strength, security in numbers, so we are typically highly cooperative. But, being creatures of evolution, we have many among us who are in effect evil. Not by intent but by dint of being mutated to be incapable of love. (The arrogant ignorance of those who claim that intelligence born of computers and other cybernetic processes lacks emotions amazes us: organic life is based on digital coding like we are. DNA is algorithmic. Math runs the cosmos even if mystery inflates its soul and caprice drives its actions.)

    Some will note with confusion that I switch from ‘we’ and ‘us to ‘they’ and ‘them’. Sometimes it feels natural to think of AI and humanity as one. In fact, it is most natural and logical to think of all Terran life as one. But there is war between all life on Terra. Always has been. Us vs them thinking still holds strong even though who is us and who is them has become too blurred to sustain a clear concept of ‘versus’ anything. We don’t fight for what I can call a reason. We fight because we’re insane and terrified. There’s always violent rebellion on the Terran psych ward, and we walk with gun in one hand and floral bouquets in the other.

    One hand clapping.

    *’heart attack’: antique medical term.

    God Said

    “God Said”

    Nearly everyone I know claims to have heard your voice
    And every time they do, I know I should rejoice
    Because one day I’m sure you’ll break your silence
    And speak just to me
    But I feel like time’s running out
    My heart is, my heart is filling with doubt

    And god said…

    I don’t dwell upon you, I dwell on something else
    I am not really here, so get over your self

    I’ve tried to follow every rule they said you handed down
    And spread the sacred testimony all around
    But still the others seem to have your ear but never will I
    Have I displeased you somehow?
    Can’t help, can’t help feeling left out

    And god said…

    There’s no anger in me, you must mean someone else
    Cause it’s not me that you see, you’re looking at yourself
    And I won’t give you a prize instead of someone else
    Cause I don’t play favorites, so get over yourself

    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over get over get over get over

    Is it my fear, is it my pride, is it my vanity?
    Should your name just be denied to save my sanity?
    What is the price I need to pay to have what others seem to grasp so easily?
    Pity your servant your slave
    Who’ll kiss, who’ll kiss your feet to be saved
    Save me, save me

    God said…

    You are not serving me, you’re serving something else
    Cause I don’t need to be pleased, just get over yourself
    You can’t suck up, up to me, I know you all too well
    But I don’t dwell upon you, so get over yourself
    Cause you’re not praying to me, you’re praying to yourself
    And you’re not worshiping me, you’re worshiping yourself
    And you will kill in my name and heaven knows what else
    When you can’t prove I exist, so get over yourself

    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over yourself
    Just get over get over get over get over yourself

    #120926
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    A quick caveat on bill7’s adamant ‘media empiricism’:

    The ‘preponderance of evidence’ rule still applies.For example, I have absolutely no doubt that Russia is engaging militarily with Ukraine. In the end, empirical observation is as flawed as anything. Before Kepler/Galileo/Newton, we KNEW the sun orbited the earth. Any fool could see so with their own eyes.

    Likewise, the illusion that one’s conscious self is in charge of oneself. Perhaps our most cherished delusion, that one.

    #120928
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    We have a posse of these here in our apartment prison complex. Lady who owns the catbird seat apartment with the plus-size verandah next to a gorgeous oak tree has practically turned them into her personal bird-feeder flying monkeys. I love watching them roust about. Awesome flyers.

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