Nov 242022
 


Salvador Dali Bay of Cadaques 1925

 

The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)
It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)
Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)
New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)
EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)
Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)
Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)
Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)
Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)
EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)
Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)
EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)
China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media
NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)
Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)
Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

 

 

 

 


Jim Garrison in his book, “On the Trail of the Assassins.”
“I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason…inexplicably headed in the same direction as if drawn by a magnetic field..as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible”

 

 

Elon AOC

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.”

The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)

Now we are asked to be afraid of Vladimir Putin weaponizing gas! We must act in defense of the Russian’s weaponizing food! And Vladimir Putin personally killed J.F.K. with a BB-Gun from the Texas book depository in Dallas. Did Russia’s leadership wake up one morning in 2014 and decide a NATO regime was needed in next-door Ukraine? Well, no. Were the Russians shelling people with Polish DNA in Kyiv for eight years? Certainly not. The EU, NATO, and the New York Times would have informed us of that. So why would Russia act the way she has recently? I see no one out there gazing with practical eyes on this situation. Oh, commodities and controlling them! Money! Tons and tons of money! That has to be it.

Some weeks back, Vladimir Putin’s government decided to allow the free passage of grain ships through the Black Sea out of southwestern Ukraine. The “food” was ostensibly headed to the starving people of Africa and Asia that Washington, London, and Brussels were berserk over. Even the United Nations has held that starving people worldwide need to blame Russia. I was reading a Voice of America report on recent UN meetings about the Ukraine/Black Sea shipments, and it reads like intel for Wall Street commodities brokers. And there’s the point. Food security worldwide is now the red-hot poker western elites are jabbing Russia with now. Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.

For those in the dark or dizzied by all these events, and I am often with you, the accessible version is to simply call this World War III. Yes, we are already in it. But think about the sequence of recent events and their impact for proper clarity. First, Nord Stream was blown up. The next day a pipeline from Norway to Poland carrying much more expensive natural gas went into operation. A few days after this, the Poles demanded trillions in reparations from the Germans for WW2 grievances settled decades ago. The essentials that power economies and people are being weaponized, but the perpetrators hide in plain sight behind the media they own.

Retired U.S. Colonel Douglas MacGregor gave the best appraisal of the situation in a talk with Aaron Maté and Katie Halper. MacGregor, dubbed “America’s Greatest Warfighter,” is a war hero and former strategy advisor during the Trump administration. He says, in no uncertain terms, that Washington and London’s leaders are on a mission to destroy Germany and the German-Russian cooperative potential. I believe he is right on all counts, but he leaves off how the western elites (banksters) are profiteering from it all. This is a multiple-pronged strategy, not some haphazard knee-jerking.

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“Russia refused to play by the rules..”

It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)

In his March 21 press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price told the gathered reporters that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” A reporter asked Price, “What are you saying about your support for a negotiated settlement à la Zelenskyy, but on whose principles?” In what still may be the most remarkable statement of the war, Price responded, “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” Price, who a month earlier had discouraged talks between Russia and Ukraine, rejected Kiev negotiating an end to the war with Ukraine’s interests addressed because US core interests had not been addressed. The war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine.

A month later, in April, when a settlement seemed to be within reach at the Istanbul talks, the US and UK again pressured Ukraine not to pursue their own goals and sign an agreement that could have ended the war. They again pressured Ukraine to continue to fight in pursuit of the larger goals of the US and its allies. Then British prime minister Boris Johnson scolded Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” He added that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.” Once again, the war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine. At every opportunity, Biden and his highest ranking officials have insisted “that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how and when or if they negotiate with the Russians” and that the US won’t dictate terms: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

But that has never been true. The US wouldn’t allow Ukraine to negotiate on their terms when they wanted to. The US stopped Ukraine from negotiating in March and April when they wanted to; they pushed them to negotiate in November when they did not want to. The war in Ukraine has always been about larger US goals. It has always been about the American ambition to maintain a unipolar world in which they were the sole polar power at the center and top of the world. Ukraine became the focus of that ambition in 2014 when Russia for the first time stood up to American hegemony.

Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, says that since the end of the Cold War Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly. But when, in 2014, the US set up and supported a coup in Ukraine that was intended to pull Ukraine closer into the NATO and European security sphere Russia responded by annexing Crimea, Russia broke out of its post Cold War policy of compliance and pushed back against US hegemony. The 2014 “crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.”

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“This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU..”

Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)

Ukraine is like a black hole. It swallows everything you throw at it… Billions of dollars in assistance, millions of tons of military material, and (I hope not) hundreds of thousands of lives of Khokhol and its Nazi buddies, especially if they allow the Clown-Zirkus to remain in power for much longer without a check. This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU, all of them being steered directly to the void, in suicide mode, by their (brain disabled, dim-witted, deranged and psychopathic) ruling elites.

But what are really black Holes? You can ask yourself. From an astronomical standpoint, it is simply a star (of some mass) that, at the end of its life, collapses into a point (the singularity) due to the gravity produced by its own mass. This gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from it, hence the name “Black Hole”. They can achieve this state through a variety of processes, but the end result is always the same: something from which you cannot escape if you fall within its event horizon. And that is only defined by its mass, electric charge, and momentum. Whatever falls behind its event horizon is forever out of reach of observers on the outside.

There might be another (more convenient) meaning for this particular Ukrainian black hole. I read in my university days an anthology edited by Jerry Pournelle, where he said that Russians never use the term, because it has some eschatological connotations… some kind of biology-related obscenity. I don’t know if it is true, but I have to say that comparing Banderastan to the black hole at the end of the digestive system of some kind of mythological beast (let’s call it Hegemon) looks like much more pertinent in this case. This end has a particularly long and interesting list of possible denominations.

The beast, has an insatiable hunger, if allowed it would devour us all. The crazy psychopaths ruling elites in the West are feeding it as quickly as possible and as much as they can (wasting in the process the wealth, health and resources of those they govern) because they are also part of the parasites sucking the life and energy off the beast. The more they throw into the mouth, the more they suck out of it. The system works perfectly for them and, what is left, once processed and liberated of most of the real substance and value, is excreted through the blackhole at the end.

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Max Keiser:
• I guess the good news about the FTX racketeering scandal is that it looks like it’ll take down several high profile media outlets, the entire ‘crypto’ farce and many scammy VC’s and banks.
• [NYTimes] @dealbook just indicted itself as being part of a criminal enterprise and participating in the FTX racketeering scandal.

New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)

As we discussed last night, Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in “explaining” to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion according to new FTX CEO John J. Ray) from the now bankrupt FTX, an act which left it insolvent and without liquidity, called it “loans” which were “generally” not used for “large amounts of personal consumption” (just “small amounts” used for such trivial items as $40 million penthouses and private jets). And the only reason we don’t officially call him a criminal just yet, is because he has not yet confirmed he used clienOutrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellent money from his exchange to fund his personal hedge fund, an act which would cost any other individual decades in jail… but not prominent democrats like SBF or Jon Corzine, of course.

Plus it’s the US legal system’s job to do that, not ours. Although we are growing increasingly skeptical this prominent Democratic donor will ever see the inside of a courtroom. It’s not just us: with much of the entire world demanding to know how this corpulent 30-year-old still has not been thrown in prison, or at least charged with a variety of crimes, the NYT just confirmed to the entire world what a farce the one-time paper of record has become, and how it is willing to whore itself out for clicks – not to mention prominent Democrat donors – because moments after SBF tweeted that he will be speaking with Andrew Ross-Sorkin moderated NYT “summit” on Nov 30… … Sorkin quickly confirmed as much.

And so, instead of being under arrest, SBF will instead be treated like a luminary alongside other such other Democrat icons as Zelenskyy (who according to some may have been intimately familiar with FTX fund flows in the past year) and of course the woman who along with Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, made it all possible by blowing the biggest asset bubble of all time: Janet Yellen. And while we are certain that the NYT – which we assume is done writing puff pieces on behalf of SBF after it became a laughing stock last week – would be quick to mercilessly cancel and expel from its “prestigious” conference anyone who had misgendered some post-op transsexual, it is willing to give this thieving pathological liar and sociopath a forum in which to profess his innocence to the entire world, and by association with other Democrat “celebrities”…

 

 

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Europe is not where the brains are.

EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)

The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution designating Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. In a strongly worded but largely symbolic document, MEPs also called on the European Union to further reduce diplomatic ties with Moscow and quickly adopt a ninth package of anti-Russia sanctions. Diplomatic relations with Russia should be cut “to the absolute minimum necessary” and Russian “state-affiliated institutions,” such as Russian cultural centers and diaspora organizations, should be closed and banned, the MEPs said. As the European Union cannot officially designate states as sponsors of terrorism at present, the parliament called on bloc members to put in place the necessary legal framework and to consider adding Moscow to the relevant list.

It also urged EU members to initiate “a comprehensive international isolation” of Russia and “to swiftly complete its work on a ninth sanctions package.” The resolution, which was supported by a vast majority of parliamentarians, accused Russia of conducting “deliberate attacks and atrocities” against Ukrainian civilians, of destroying critical infrastructure in the country, and of violating human rights. Therefore, it said, the European Parliament “recognizes Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state which uses means of terrorism.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed the resolution, tweeting that “Russia must be isolated at all levels and held accountable.”

In recent weeks, similar largely symbolic declarations were adopted by NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. While Kiev has repeatedly urged the West to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism,” only a few countries – including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic – have heeded the call, and their actions have been limited to symbolic gestures. Those with the power to enforce anti-terrorism sanctions against other states, specifically the US, have so far refused to take such a step. In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Washington that designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism would become “a point of no return” in bilateral relations.

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“..Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.”

Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)

The US cannot designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” since it simply does not fit the relevant criteria, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told a briefing on Tuesday, while commenting on a similar initiative by European lawmakers. The EU parliament adopted a resolution calling Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. “The designation of a state sponsor of terror in terms of the way US law defines it is not a good match for Russia here,” Van Schaack told journalists. Washington is currently “exploring other potential designations” that would allow it to potentially imposed further sanctions on Moscow, the ambassador added. According to Van Schaack, such a label would not be necessary since the US is already “utilizing our sanctions to an incredible degree.”

The non-binding resolution by the EU parliament was supported by 494 MEPs while 58 voted against it and 44 abstained. The MEPs particularly stated that Russia’s attacks on “the civilian population of Ukraine [and] the destruction of civilian infrastructure” amount to “war crimes” and “acts of terror.” The document also called on Brussels to develop a relevant legal framework allowing it to officially designate entire nations as sponsors of terrorism, adding that it is currently not possible. The resolution also demanded what it called the “comprehensive international isolation” of Russia, including the further reduction of diplomatic relations and the swift adoption of a new round of sanctions. “Contacts with its official representatives at all levels (should) be kept to the absolute minimum necessary,” the document said.

On Tuesday, Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.” The EU parliament’s document adopted so far is largely symbolic as it does not impose any legal commitments on Brussels. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry blasted any such designations as a way for the West to legitimize their “unilateral coercive measures” against their perceived adversaries. “A number of nations representing the ‘collective West’ use such labels as a ‘terrorist state,’ ‘terrorist regime’ or a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ to designate those nations [they consider] ‘unwelcome’ and not fitting their warped perceptions of democracy,” Ivan Nechayev, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, told the Russian media.

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“Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)

Ukraine’s energy operator Energoatom has announced Wednesday emergency power shutdowns in effect across all regions of the country amid a new large wave of Russian airstrikes. Sirens have been sounding throughout the day across the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky in follow-up estimated that 10 million Ukrainians now lack access to electricity due to the attacks. “There are emergency shutdowns in addition to planned, stabilization ones,” he explained. “The elimination of the consequences of another missile attack against Ukraine continues all day.” Casualties have been reported in the eastern cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and at least one person has been reported killed in Kiev.

Speaking of the renewed attacks on the capital, Mykhailo Podolyak, head of the Office of the Ukrainian President’s office said, “A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway.” He described, citing recent anti-air defense systems acquired from Western countries, “While someone is waiting for World Cup results and the number of goals scored, Ukrainians are waiting for another score – number of intercepted Russian missiles. A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway. In NASAMS, IRIS-T and Air Defense Forces we trust.” Kiev’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, issued an emergency message on social media warning that ongoing Russian strikes are “Hitting one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities. Stay in shelters! The air alert continues.”

Also alarming is that the mayor in a follow-up message said that water services have been suspended in Kiev after the major strikes. While it’s not the first time that some war-hit parts of Ukraine have been left without electricity and water, the country is now in an extremely dire and urgent phase, having already seen an estimated half its national power infrastructure degraded or destroyed. Temperatures are quickly dropping, with the capital having witnessed its first snow earlier this month. Nuclear power generation is also being severely impacted: Several units were shut down at the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine due to a loss of power during Russian air raids across Ukraine, Ukraine’s nuclear energy firm Energoatom said. An Energoatom spokesperson said, “Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

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“To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.”

Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)

Earlier today the Russian military shut down the Ukrainian electricity network. Previous attacks had limited the distribution capacity to some 50% of demand. Controlled blackouts over several hours per day allowed to give some electricity for a few hours to most parts of the country. The attack today created a much larger problem. Not only were distribution networks attacked but also so the elements that connect Ukraine’s electricity production facilities to the distribution network. All four nuclear power stations of Ukraine with their 15 reactors are now in shutdown mode. Kiev along with most other cities of Ukraine no longer has electricity. Moldavia is likewise effected as it received some 20% of its electricity from Ukraine. When the Ukrainian network shut down the only local thermal power plant shut down too. It is likely that it can be switched on again but that can be a complicate process.

Limited electricity imports from the European system into Ukraine may still be possible but that electricity would only be available in Ukraine’s western cities. Before today’s attack the Washington Post reported of the difficulties in repairing the network. As we ad explained before the Russian attacks are hitting the transformers that connect the national 330 kilovolt backbone network. These are hard to replace: “As the scope of damage to Ukraine’s energy systems has come into focus in recent days, Ukrainian and Western officials have begun sounding the alarm but are also realizing they have limited recourse. Ukraine’s Soviet-era power system cannot be fixed quickly or easily. In some of the worst-hit cities, there is little officials can do other than to urge residents to flee — raising the risk of economic collapse in Ukraine and a spillover refugee crisis in neighboring European countries….

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that about half of the country’s energy infrastructure was “out of order” following the bombardment…. For weeks, Russian missiles have targeted key components of Ukraine’s electrical transmission system, knocking out vital transformers without which it is impossible to supply power to households, businesses, government offices, schools, hospitals and other critical facilities. During a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the state-run power grid operator, called the damage to the power system “colossal.”… Russians, he said, were mainly targeting substations, nodes on the electrical grid where the current is redirected from power stations. The main components of these substations are autotransformers — “high-tech and high-cost equipment” that is difficult to replace….

A list of “urgent needs” from DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, circulating in Washington, lists dozens of transformers along with circuit breakers, bushings and transformer oil…. But it is the autotransformers — the “heart” of the substations, in the words of Kudrytskyi — that are at the top of the Ukrainians’ list of needs and the key to keeping the country’s electrical grid functioning. The Ukrainians have tried to buy up every autotransformer they can find, going as far as South Korea to purchase them, but they still need to place orders for more to be built.“We try to collect everything around the world that they have now, and order more,” said Olena Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry. Any attempts to repair the network are useless as long as Russia continues to attack it. To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.

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Ha ha ha. I bet Boris spoke the truth for once.

Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)

Germany has angrily dismissed claims by Boris Johnson that in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine it said it would be better for Ukraine to fold than to become embroiled in a long war. Johnson, interviewed by CNN, also claimed that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was in denial about the threat of invasion, and that Italy, led at the time by Mario Draghi, said it could not help because it was so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.A spokesperson for the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, rejected the claims with a diplomatically phrased dig at Johnson. “We know that the very entertaining former prime minister always has a unique relationship with the truth; this case is no exception,” the official said. Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, backed the dismissal of Johnson’s account.

Johnson’s claims appear similar to comments from Andriy Melnyk, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, who has said German politicians told him before the invasion that they expected Ukraine to be defeated within three days and so it was pointless to provide any help. Melnyk claimed on Twitter in March: “On 14 February we were warning German politicians: ‘Kyiv may be bombed in the coming days! We urgently need 12 thousand anti-tank rockets from Germany.’ In response: just mockery. So sad. So furious.” He later claimed that the German finance minister, Christian Lindner, was against supplying weapons to Ukraine or cutting Russia off from the international Swift banking payments. Melnyk told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Lindner had told him with a smile that he thought Ukraine would collapse within a few hours and that he was ready to talk to a puppet regime that would be installed by Russia.

The German finance ministry denied the accusation. Macron was broadcast before the invasion making desperate pleas to Vladimir Putin to hold talks with Joe Biden. Johnson stressed in his interview that EU nations had later rallied behind Ukraine and were providing steadfast support, but he said that was not universally the case in the period before the invasion in February. “This thing was a huge shock … we could see the Russian battalion tactical groups amassing, but different countries had very different perspectives,” Johnson told CNN’s Richard Quest in Portugal. “The German view was at one stage that if it were going to happen, which would be a disaster, then it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly and for Ukraine to fold,” he claimed, citing “all sorts of sound economic reasons” for that approach.

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This should stop EU support right there and then, of course. First give us your billions, then we’ll read you your rights. And cut off your energy.

EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)

The European Union must cast aside all doubts about new anti-Russia sanctions and double down on slapping Moscow with new restrictions that would curb its missile industry, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Tuesday. Speaking at a regular briefing, Kuleba urged the EU to speed up the work on its ninth sanctions package, which he described as long overdue. “We are only hearing about an attempt to start serious work on its preparation. Such a situation is totally unacceptable,” the minister said. In the same vein, he called on his EU colleagues “to put aside any doubts or, as it is fashionable to say, ‘fatigue,’ and to start to quickly complete the ninth sanctions package.” “If the Ukrainians are not tired, then the rest of Europe, all the more, has neither the moral nor the political right to get tired,” Kuleba stressed.

He called on the EU to focus on sanctions impacting Russia’s capability to produce missiles, which are used by Moscow to conduct strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Russia has been targeting Ukrainian energy facilities, including power stations, since October 10, after accusing Kiev of attacking Russian structures, including the strategic Crimean Bridge. Due to these strikes, Ukraine has been experiencing rolling blackouts, with authorities there saying that these attacks have knocked out about 40% of the nation’s energy infrastructure. On Tuesday, Politico reported that the EU has not officially started working yet on the ninth sanctions package against Russia. However, according to two of the outlet’s sources, the new measures may potentially focus on Russian individuals that can be linked to the Ukraine conflict.

The previous sanctions package was adopted by the EU in early October and sought to deprive Moscow of €7 billion ($7.2 billion) in revenues from the import of products which support the Russian economy, including steel products, various machinery, textiles and non-gold jewelry. Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western countries imposed sweeping new sanctions on Moscow, freezing around half of Moscow’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. According to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, these assets “have been essentially stolen” by the West. Last week, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, claimed that the US, which has supported the sanctions, is seeking to weaken and destroy Russia, and is using Ukraine as a “battering ram” to achieve that goal.

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See? Just to make their point that you have “No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict”, they cut off your gas…

Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)

Kiev has stopped the operation of a section of the southern branch of the ‘Druzhba’ (Friendship) oil pipeline that transits Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing Russian oil-exporting company Transneft. According to the report, oil transmission has been suspended for an indefinite period. “In Ukraine, the section [of Druzhba] has been stopped, from Brod to the Carpathians,” said Igor Demin, an adviser to the president of Transneft. He added that deliveries via the Belarusian section of the pipeline were continuing. Last week, Kiev stopped oil flows to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, explaining the suspension was linked to a Russian air strike that reportedly had hit a transformer station near the border with Belarus.


It stated that the service was suspended due to a “drop in voltage.” Kiev later announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile attacks targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike, in April, reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%. Built in the 1960s, Druzhba is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, which carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

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We don’t believe you. But still, question: what did you pay?

EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)

The European Union has entirely replaced Russian natural gas imports with LNG and pipeline gas from alternative reliable suppliers, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told a plenary session of the European Parliament on Wednesday. The bloc is due to debate a gas price cap proposal on Thursday to prevent sky-high costs for consumers. “Diversification, demand reduction, a common storage policy [and] our #RepowerEU actions are making a difference,” Simson tweeted after the session, adding: “But we need to stay vigilant.” The substitution of Russian pipeline gas came on the back of the increased purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, experts told RIA Novosti. According to the European Commission, between January and August the total volume of gas imports from Russia, including LNG, decreased by 39 billion cubic meters (bcm).


During the same period, LNG supplies from the United States jumped by almost 80% in annual terms. Last year, Russia accounted for around 45% of the EU’s gas imports. According to the International Energy Agency, Moscow supplied 155 bcm to the bloc, while this year imports are expected to drop to a little over a third of that (around 60 bcm). Meanwhile, analysts from the research firm Kpler warned this month that replacing Russian pipeline gas supplies with LNG would result in significant costs for the EU. Unlike pipeline gas, which is usually supplied under long-term contracts, LNG is more often purchased on the spot market, and its cost tends to be many times higher. Meanwhile, increased purchases by the EU have been making it difficult for developing countries to buy LNG, as they are being now forced to compete on price with wealthier nations.

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“Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons..”

China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media

Central banks across the world have stepped up their gold purchases after Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions this year, according to strategists cited by the Japanese business daily Nikkei Asia. Some $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves, and billions more from individuals and businesses, have reportedly been frozen by the US and its allies. The Kremlin has repeatedly slammed the seizures as “theft.” Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons, according to data revealed in the November report of the World Gold Council. The figure marks a dramatic surge from 186 tons recorded in the preceding quarter, and 87.7 tons in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile the year-to-date total surpasses any full year since 1967.

Emin Yurumazu, a Japan-based economist from Turkey, told the media that “anti-Western countries are eager to accumulate gold holdings on hand,” after nations saw how Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions. The central banks of Turkey, Uzbekistan and India previously said they had bought 31.2 tons, 26.1 tons and 17.5 tons, respectively. It is currently unclear which nations purchased the rest of the 300-ton total calculated in the industry group’s report. Some unidentified purchases are to be expected, but an unspecified slice of “this magnitude is unheard of,” Koichiro Kamei, a financial and precious-metals analyst, was cited by the agency as saying. “China likely bought a substantial amount of gold from Russia,” market analyst and former Japan director for the World Gold Council, Itsuo Toshima, said.

He explained that the People’s Bank of China likely purchased a portion of the Central Bank of Russia’s gold holdings of over 2,000 tons. The analyst noted that this is typical behavior from the Chinese monetary regulator, which did not disclose any gold purchases from 2009 to 2015, and then reported it had increased the reserves by 600 tons. The People’s Bank of China has not published any new reports on gold purchases since 2019. The gold-buying frenzy comes as part of the latest attempts made by central banks to protect their assets by reducing their exposure to the US dollar. China has been a dominant force in the current de-dollarization trend. According to data from the US Treasury Department, the nation sold $121.2 billion in US bonds between March and October.

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Of course they talk. The US wants to know what Russia is thinking.

NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)

Russia’s top military commander, Valery Gerasimov, did not communicate with Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, contrary to what some Western media outlets have claimed, the Russian Defense Ministry has stated. Reports about “typical” conversations between the two military officials and an agreement on the “safe passage of ships in the Black Sea” are “an invention from the start to the end,” a statement released on Wednesday said. Earlier in the day, the news outlet EurActiv, which specializes in covering EU affairs, cited a NATO source as saying that some Eastern European members of the alliance “raised their reservations” about alleged contact between Bauer and Gerasimov.

The source claimed that the two had regular exchanges aimed at deescalating the conflict, particularly in the Black Sea, and that the parties had agreed to “be careful” to avoid accidents. Unnamed members of the alliance questioned the practice, but others said Bauer was entitled to have his channel of communication with Russia. The Dutch admiral served as the chief of defense in his home country before becoming the chair of NATO’s Military Committee in June last year. The Military Committee is composed of the defense chiefs of all member states, while Bauer has the role of the topmost adviser on military strategy to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s decision-making body. General Gerasimov heads the Russian General Staff, a position equivalent to that of a chief of defense in NATO states.

The EurActiv source claimed that the US, Türkiye, and nations in western and southern Europe “fortunately” countered the push by the UK, Eastern European, and Scandinavian members for “a zero-sum approach” in relations with Russia. Berlin’s role in the alliance has been reduced to virtually nothing, the outlet claimed. “Germans pay, give and don’t speak,” the source was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, NATO members were mostly on the same page in terms of supporting Ukraine, as long as it didn’t compromise their own national security, according to the same tip. The report said that applicants Finland and Sweden were unlikely to join the US-led bloc before June next year, when Türkiye holds national elections. Ankara blocked their accession, claiming that the two nations were not committed to fighting terrorist groups threatening Turkish national security.

Read more …

“Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…”

Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)

The last few months have seen a growing number of companies choosing to exercise their freedom of speech by choosing to abandon any advertising platforms that dare allow freedom of speech to virulently spread among its users. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the fearmongery and virtue-signal-ery has been turned up to ’11’ as the ‘woke-est’ of those companies have reportedly pulled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising from the social media platform (despite Musk’s insistence that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”) Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…

So, in an effort to quantify just how broke you can become if you go woke, we created the ‘woke advertisers’ basket. This is a market-cap weighted index of 34 stocks representing our best aggregation of the woke-est companies who have publicly claimed they are withdrawing/pausing their advertising on Twitter… and in most cases, have played the ‘virtue signal’ card while doing so over the “dangers” of being on such a “hate-filled” platform”.

Note: an * means the company has issued a statement or was publicly reported as stopping its ads on Twitter and subsequently confirmed. Otherwise, companies identified on this list are “quiet quitters”, based on a Media Matters analysis of Pathmatics data. These companies were previously advertising on Twitter, but then stopped for a significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers. Since the start of June, when US economic surprise data started to turn down and economic weakness began to be acknowledged – the companies that make up the basket of stocks that have decided to pull back from advertising on Twitter have been underperforming (-11.4% vs S&P -1.9%)…

Additionally, the anti-Twitter basket has significantly underperformed since 03/25 when Musk made his initial offer to buy Twitter (-17% vs S&P -11%) and also underperformed since Musk took over Twitter on 10/27 (+3.3% vs S&P +5.1%), even as the broad market has squeezed notably higher. Is the signaling of how virtuous they are by antagonizing Elon Musk merely a cover for extensive cost cutting and marketing budget reductions as the C-Suite sees recession imminent… Who knows? sBut we suspect that if things are about to shift from bad to worse in the global economy, these anti-Twitter companies are perhaps more likely to underperform (having shown their cards already).

Read more …

“They broke the deal..”

Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

Elon Musk said Tuesday that Twitter is lacking a moderation council because of the actions of a “large coalition of political and social activists.” The billionaire businessman took over the platform in October and promised shortly after that Twitter would be forming a “content moderation council” that had “widely diverse viewpoints” and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.” However, the Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that the absence of a moderation council was due to a group of political and social activists who he claimed broke an agreement with him by encouraging companies to stop advertising on Twitter. Musk was responding to a Twitter user who accused him of penning a “completely fictional” tweet regarding the establishment of a moderation council.


“A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “They broke the deal,” he added. [..] Earlier this month, Musk claimed that Twitter’s revenue was declining because of “activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.” “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” Musk said. The businessman later threatened to name and shame the advertisers who were boycotting the platform following his takeover of the site and despite his assurance that the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said, “with no consequences.” “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote in an open letter to advertisers in October.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Schwaub Schools Dr Urso

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peach Faced Lovebird Parrot on a Saguaro Cactus, Phoenix, Arizona

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle November 24 2022

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 50 total)
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  • #121746

    Salvador Dali Bay of Cadaques 1925   • The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler) • It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 24 2022]

    #121747
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Somehow still crazier than I thought:

    “Colorado Gay Club Shooter Identifies as “Non-Binary” with They/Them Pronouns”

    Also, so wtf was going on there for motive?

    Next Andre Bing in Va. We’re on 22 of 25 are Leftists so far?

    Now we need calls for Joe Biden to show some class and not politicize their deaths. Is now really the time, Joe? Nope. A minute later campaigning for gun control. Me too: if only everyone were well-armed this wouldn’t have happened. (Something else would have happened.)

    “Howls of Outrage after New York Times Confirms SBF to Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellen”

    This is awesome. All the criminals together in one place, no shame. Billion dollar criminals, or need not apply.

    “a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason…inexplicably headed in the same direction

    Again noting nothing happened for the election itself: Twitter is purchased just AFTER it can help the election. FTX is clearly the biggest election story, easily brought down for an October scandal, but Binance takes it down – actively – the day AFTER the election. The House goes to GOP, Trump says in his candidate declaration, but before final tallies. That is correct. The House is taken only by one: the exact amount needed to have committees begin investigations. Note unlike the last 40 years, the GOP suddenly wastes no time. Why? They didn’t do jack between 2015 and 2020 when they had a majority. Nothing since 1996: they call them “Democrats driving the speed limit”, “the fast communists vs the slow communists” for a reason. Why the rush? Press meetings suddenly ask questions. The day AFTER GOP wins, Supreme Court releases Trump’s taxes.

    Notice all these things? They all have in common being a plan that is prepared but suddenly put into action. And that plan takes action AFTER the election, not before. That is, strangely it suggests they were not trying to win the election, but only need one hammer to ring the bell: The House. (They used the Senate last time)

    Why? They only need adequate control to gain the real prize and the real government: The People. CNN down, reforming. NY Times: constantly discredited, failing. Twitter, the public square: captured. Parler, Truth Social, Gab, etc: alt-platforms built and occupied, ready for use. Disney: smackdown. Google’s CEO: MIA.

    Since they released Hunter’s laptop and nothing happened, they — the White Hats — circled round and captured a few more of these chess pieces to start again. What was lost but time? Would you prefer a Civil War? If it only cost time, retained control and only your fee-fees of frustration were hurt, then suck it up Buttercup.

    But my point here was: what R the odds? All working together, all same target date, like an invisible magnetic force.

    Why is SBF being reported so gingerly? For example by calling him “SBF” instead of his real name “Bank Fried”?

    So let me get this right: SBF who had the clearest multi-billion dollar crime in history is innocent and walking around giving expensive public speeches, but Trump is guilty of something we can’t name and needs to go to jail. …And this is not partisan at all, just good law and order, social justice.

    “The more they throw into the mouth, the more they suck out of it. The system works perfectly for them and, what is left, once processed and liberated of most of the real substance and value, is excreted through the blackhole at the end.”

    A very expressive metaphor and probably correct. The beast’s purpose is to absorb and extract money, the blood of life.

    “Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in “explaining” to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion”

    Need to watch the whole South Park “Margaritaville” episode again. Not the Fed headless chicken part, or the “Aaaaand it’s gone” part. This part where they go to the jack-ss CEO who says, “Mmmm, yeah, um, yeah, your money’s not here, yeah, sorry, yeah…” The only thing I can think, as a child of a dozen insiders, is that he thinks he’s going to Ken Lay island. That is, he goes in the front door, out the back door, and Sydney Carton appears to take his place in the docket. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/summary-and-analysis/book-3-chapter-13 (Wiki wasn’t precise enough)

    So just as I’ve said, he makes maybe $500M for his trouble in service to the CIA and DNC. Some poor drugged up drunkard ends up in prison or having an “accident”, and Bankman retires to Thailand next door to McAfee. That’s why he’s so relaxed. But not being an old cynic he doesn’t believe the CIA would double cross him despite every measure he took and every red flag thrown up. Like Lee Oswald giving a notarized statement to the Russian Embassy, and using a gun that’s impossible to shoot. There’s an old movie “F/X” that’s about staging, swapping fake outcomes. Suuuuure you’ll be fine, Sam, but wouldn’t it be easier to just NOT swap you? “Burn Notice.” Sorry old chum.

    But this would explain why HE is so relaxed and won’t shut up, doesn’t bother with lawyers, etc. He’s an a staged op from the get-go. He knows it. They discussed it. When collapse is the PURPOSE, why wouldn’t they have pre-planned their parachutes? There’s zero chance FTX was a going concern. Nothing was lost. All the money was stolen and handed to his Party Capo as promised. Why WOULDN’T they fulfill his retirement?

    Anyway, FTX seems to be taking down the next exchange now. And elsewhere there are derivatives involved. They don’t activate for 30 days, and derivatives are $2 Quadrillion or more at this point. $2,000 Trillion, which is $2,000,000 Million Billion. Like zillion-grillion-killion numbers I make up some times: equally not real. It can take a few FDIC banks in that sphere, and the 100% fraud of Tether, dropping crypto AND Dollar-banks.

    Much fun as that is, Credit Suisse is the same, no different. That like-kind ponzi, empty shell also blew up and has an equal-sized hole. Difference is, it has a Fed et al to print money to bail it out. That was the PURPOSE of a Fed: to the be “lender of last resort” so JP Morgan wouldn’t have to do it in his living room. They dirty the carpet.

    Again, the coins aren’t gone. There’s nothing wrong with Bitcoin. When MF Global went down we didn’t say “Dollars are fake” “Stocks are a scam” or “Commodities aren’t real”. Global was an EXCHANGE. Not paper dollars, stock certificates, or a truck of orange juice. Obviously those are real. If you put your car in Self-Stor and they steal and sell it on you, that’s not the CAR’S fault. Problem being: regular guy and investor can’t tell that. To them it’s “Crypto isn’t safe” and that’s how it is. Interest and investment falls.

    “EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’ (RT)”

    I see how easy it will be the turn the taps on now. “Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey”. Of course that’s the POINT. Of MacKinder. However, without conquering Russia Europe will slowly collapse in darkness. Darkness matching the religion of their leaders, the religion of nihilism and death.

    “adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.” The EU parliament’s document adopted so far is largely symbolic”

    Signaling! Can’t you see me signal??? What’s wrong with you, I’m signaling! Helloooo…?? Know your place; I’m talking to you, Juanita!

    “a comprehensive international isolation” of Russia and “to swiftly complete its work on a ninth sanctions package.”

    Slow learners. “If at eighth you don’t succeed…” But these guys also think the vax works so well you need five of them, and another every four weeks. That’s what makes it a “Vaccine” and not a “Therapy”. Darwin, I guess.

    As for family taking them, yeah, I know. But this isn’t the first time. The government has always lied, ALWAYS, since all of us were children. Because of this, logically you must always expect they will pull something like this, you’ll have to liquidate your property and flee over the Alps to Vermont (while singing in harmony, of course). So some have further to go than others, but we ALL KNEW. If they’re on life-long denial and never created any life boats or contingency plans, whose fault is that? You can always – though not easily – drop back to the level of an immigrant, illegal immigrant even, to live like a gypsy and save your life. Many have, millions, and a thousand times in history. We look down on the Jews denying and remaining in Europe for instance. Well, this was your chance, and they made their own choices, not in 2020, but in all the years leading up to.

    If someone is trying to KILL you, yes, flee to NY and become an illegal taxi driver. I can’t do it for you, but I have my own lifeboats. It’s called a “lifeboat” because it’s desperate and not as nice as the ship.

    “ Huge Swathes of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)”

    Since nobody understands anything, the Grid is essentially a standing wave. A power plant of any sort has to integrate to the cohesion of the standing wave. A power plant cannot run without a grid to push electric into. That’s why with the North East Blackout, when the transmission failed, the power plants shut down as designed although there was nothing wrong with any of them. Part II: you cannot just start up a power plant again. Strangely, most of them require there to be a grid, or at least a whole lot of electric, to “turn it on” before it re-attaches to the Grid. Carefully.

    So that’s what was done here: Russia took out the Grid switching stations, dropping the Grid, but leaving the Power Plants intact, especially the nuclear ones. Also leaving all the towers, poles etc intact, just the substations. Like Russian rail, different gauge, this equipment is essentially “Russian” and must be made in Russia. It’s not impossible, not a state secret and I suppose Westinghouse could do it but they never have before and have hardly any capacity even for our own grid. The other choice is China, Russia’s ally, but even they probably have a 1 year lead time.

    Great plan. Go all-electric. Sure you won’t have any trouble in California, with forest fires, with charging, with blackouts, with trucking, with range, with rules.

    We should really invent a new energy source, hydrogen, or based on chaining hydrogen bonds. Rather than being flammable and under dangerous chemical tension, we’d make it a liquid to be consumed and removed, for light weight, then filled, so as to “charge” the car in less than two minutes. It would be flexible, as the energy isn’t grid-tied, and hopefully underground, and can re-fill twenty cars at a time. It wouldn’t use any rare materials but something very common and cheap like steel and aluminum. I would have the highest energy density, going 500 miles on a charge, and yet if it was injured or caught on fire wouldn’t burn too easily and could be put out with water. Lastly, you should be able to put this energy in a box and carry it around, to your mower or tractor, giving it essentially infinite range for just a few dollars.

    WE HAVE A SYSTEM LIKE THAT. It’s called Gas and Diesel. We already built it, at many trillion$$ expense. Electric is substantially inferior. You’d be better off with a golf cart or a 1920 Model T than that. I would. You can probably fix a Model T with a screwdriver and a file.

    “The country is now in an extremely dire and urgent phase,” and it’s winter. I can’t tell you how grave this is, and how difficult and all-consuming just living becomes, unless you’ve lived in a deep-cold winter. You think pulling water in buckets and waiting for the food truck sucks in summer? You ain’t seen nothin’. “This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco
    This ain’t no fooling around.” I ain’t got time for that now.

    “EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)”

    Yup, Kiev is the world capital and first nation, more equal than others. It’s the Fifth Reich.

    “Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons..”

    They’re always preparing, yet nothing happens. Like Russia tying the Ruble to Gold. Yes, and then nothing happened, they never pulled the switch. The dollar goes on, and with it, infinite-compounding corruption.

    “Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…”

    Yes, the Mafia is broke and collapsing. They’ve been hoarding all strength and dollars only between fellows. So is NOT advertising — to a larger base — going to bring in less money? Sounds like it’ll collapse you, but slowly, bleeding out. As fascists, they cannot exist without direct violence by government, forcing tax money and monopoly sales to their private coffers. They keep losing key pillars one by one as the White Hats target them and methodically and with irritating slowness, remove them.

    …You think that’s bad, what about the kiddie pron revenue lost now that Twitter won’t allow it? There’s the real bucks and blackmail.

    #121748
    oxymoron
    Participant

    The slippery slope. How we end up here from 1 perspective. Lying for good causes. Worth a quick look – we all do it too.

    #121749
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Worth adding at this point, no nobodies from nowhere suddenly got a docket on the Supreme Court for Election 2020.

    What? There were 50 lawsuits, highest-profile names, all declined for standing, but Dr. X from Arkansas goes to the top of the docket? Yup. And AFTER the election.

    Okay, what does the case say, that 2020 was a transparent fraud, all the congressmen, Presidents, and Governors should be thrown out, with all their Secretaries of State who oversaw it? Of course not. America is a nation of liars and weasels. We wouldn’t tell the truth even if it were easier and helped us. Tut tut.

    The suit is extremely small and says only one thing: Proper procedures weren’t followed as legitimate legal requests were made for election review. Instead of allowing the 10 days, Congress et all certified anyway. Mr. Supreme Court, is this legal?

    …Of course not. And that’s an easy 9-0 decision. Because it’s a technicality that is clear as written.

    So, should they rule, or even 5-4 on party lines, what does that mean for Election 2020, Congress, and the President who is seated? They are effectively de-certified.

    Okay well those 10 days are pretty darn long-passed, then what? You can’t just review it now, WHO would we trust to do the reviewing? Not THIS Congress and president, and we can’t install the OLD one. Huh. Funny ol’ world.

    I presume that only the MILITARY would take orders from the USSC to put the electees in escrow to sort it out.

    HOW? By having another election, overseen by the military. And that would mean some time from now, at least a year, as you’d have to give everyone time to campaign. And be a big enough event and bang for even American blockheads to remember.

    So will we look into 2020 and 2022 election shenanigans? Install the Post Office patent for honest (blockchain) voting? They own the House, why not? Or the present House can hand off to the Military Courts, who already know. Trump had executive order for election review in 2020 and already referred it all to the 10 agencies.

    No? Then why is this case on the docket? Why is the timing like an invisible, magnetic attraction?

    #121750
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Trump said he was running, but not for the 2024 election.

    Why?

    #121751
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “the Baltic Bonsais”,

    more like the Baltic Banzis,

    leading the suicide charge into the Black Shithole Oblivion of Urkonaziland.


    #121752
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Gathering water in Kiev

    #121753
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Almost enough for one flush in the 10th floor walkup

    #121754
    Red
    Participant

    Excess Mortality is Worse than it Seems.
    The UK currently has excess mortality of about 13-18%, depending on the selected period. Please consult the UK excess mortality presentation for details. You can also download a spreadsheet with data.

    In the last three months (August, September, and October, counted only until Oct 21), the expected number of deaths was about 77,000, and the actual deaths exceeded that amount by 10,181. I tabulated this data for you here, broken down by age group:

    https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/excess-mortality-is-worse-than-it

    “I certainly, when I was in [the pharmaceutical] industry, I was pro-vaccine. I would say I now abstain at best. And I’m ashamed that I was pro-vaccine because I didn’t do my homework,” confessed Yeadon.

    “I worked in the field of small molecules, pharmaceuticals,” he continued. “I was never in the field of biologicals, where the therapeutics that are vaccines were made. I never looked at the data. I never thought hard about it. I just accepted what I’ve been taught at school and in university. And once you start looking, you realize it’s extraordinarily questionable what’s gone on for decades.”

    https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/dr-mike-yeadon-i-didnt-do-my-homework

    I was planning an extra-early jam-packed pre-holiday roundup for you, to tide you over, but providence had other ideas. When I got up this morning to blog, the internet was down where we’re staying, and I spent time spreading holiday cheer with the service staff trying to get it back up. We had to wake somebody up early to restart the router or something. It’s now running at dialup speed. I’m grateful though!

    In today’s final pre-Thanksgiving roundup: things I’m grateful for; Fauci’s first deposition; covid coordinator talks out of his butt; Fauci gives his last covid briefing; AI robots with frickin’ lasers on their heads; Walt Disney’s new family friendly male-stripper show; Elon Musk is sick of negotiating with leftists; more covid data we need to capture; UConn coach collapses at game; high school coach is SADS; middle-school principal is SADS; and a high-profile study exposes excess heart attack in younger people.

    https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/c-and-c-news-wednesday-november-23

    #121755
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Gonna be a lot harder when that puddle freezes

    #121756
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Elon has saved his favorite scent for AOC

    .

    #121757
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “A very expressive metaphor and probably correct.

    The beast’s purpose is to absorb and extract money, the blood of life.”

    Taibbi got there first.

    “…..the great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money….”

    #121759
    zerosum
    Participant

    Mistake/poor choices
    We voted for Our leaders to decide for us.

    USA/Ukraine and Russia War
    “Russia refused to play by the rules imposed by USA.”

    Rule of law for FTX
    It’s the US legal system’s job to do that, not ours. Good law and order, social justice.

    Shunning is a form of social shame and humiliation. More specifically, shunning or ostracizing is a form of abuse. It is discrimination and silent bullying and sanctions.

    • Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)
    An Energoatom spokesperson said, “Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

    One of our leaders.
    Leland speech makes me stomach sick.
    https://www.ctvnews.ca/live
    ———

    #121760
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Consider the irreducible paradox of government. It’s function and purpose is to force people who want to do something to NOT do it . . . ostensibly for the sake of the welfare of those who want the opposite. Or governance can be the reverse, that is, it can be the effort to force people to DO things that they don’t want to do, which is also ostensibly for the sake of other people (who in this case would consist of those who DO want the thing done.)

    I either case, and utterly regardless of the form or nature of the government itself, there is going to be a cohort of persons who are expected to passively allow their own free will to be trampled.

    Sure looks like a recipe for warfare to me.

    Especially when the “you must” and “you must not” governmental mandates have to do with the quintessentially vital activities necessary to life itself.

    Right now we have a formally “official” government of liars thieves and murderers who are mandating that we, the presumed subjects of that government, submit to death so that liars, thieves and murders can continue living large and prospering.

    I other words, it APPEARS to be a paradox in which good must submit to evil, truth must submit to falsehood, and justice must submit to travesty.

    That is an impossibility, isn’t it?

    Government isn’t actually a paradox, then, is it?

    It’s more like a trick, a con, or massive LIE . . . in service to liars, thieves and murderers. And the lie is that the personal sovereign choice between good and evil (right and wrong) can EVER be abdicated by yielding it to others. It cannot be. YOUR choice cannot be handed off. That sovereignty is God’s gift to you. That is the truth.

    In other words, there are no paradoxes in this universe. When something LOOKS like a paradox it is merely a lie in truth’s clothing.

    #121762
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Peach Faced Lovebird Parrot on a Saguaro Cactus, Phoenix, Arizona
    There is a wild population here. I see them every year when they come and eat the seeds out of my sunflowers.

    #121763
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Tonight is the night where we all have to grudgingly behave around the large table while turkey is carved.
    Happy Thanksgiving to all.

    #121764
    Noirette
    Participant

    On: Germany rejects Boris Johnson’s claims it said Ukraine should fold to Russia.

    from top post, Guardian: https://bit.ly/3EWBjPE

    While BoJo may be semi-loopy, and blithely ignoring hard facts, heh, in this case what he said in the CNN interview is spot on.

    Of course the top economic ppl in D, the industrialists, saw disaster looming, were for a short war, as the least bad option, the speedy capitulation of UKR the best outcome, so as not to disturb exchanges / trade / pipelines / etc. in Europe. Which makes perfect sense from their pov, + for the D public ppl’s interest.

    That Macron was in denial or oblivious (or seemed to be so) is also unsurprising, he has problems at home, avoidance, was on another track, etc.

    Be in no doubt that the French were in denial right up until the last moment .. Johnson also said. Heh.

    All this shows that Eur. ‘leaders’ are uninterested in representing their countries, their ppl, and interact amongst themselves in an informal club, such as a local golf club, a pol. party meet, where some can suddenly be championed, hailed as a visionary, others excluded, snubbed. Very much like Anglo Clubs in Colonial Times (I have been reading, A Passage to India by E. M. Forster), except now the ‘Natives” are the locals, citizens of Europe, whom the Pols are supposed to represent, but are to be cancelled, subjugated.

    Unforutunately, none of them understand what is going on (imho), they are confusedly concentrated on their personal positions (institutionalsied for the most part), their relations, ties that bind, to see them through. To what future they don’t know, have no vision.

    #121765
    Noirette
    Participant

    sorry, wrong link to Guardian, see here, https://bit.ly/3VniJFH

    #121766
    Germ
    Participant

    Tom Edwards “died suddenly” aged just 29

    https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/heartbreak-popular-yorkshire-rugby-player-25573492

    Ever known so many athletes to “die suddenly” ?

    ☠️☠️☠️

    #121767
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    I wonder how much longer it will take for a substantial portion of the populace to wake up to the fact that the governments of NATOstan countries are nothing other than criminal gangs, and that those criminal gangs are carrying out theft and murder on a continuous basis not only overseas but also within the borders. And that everything mainstream is a lie.

    Adrian Orr of the RBNZ had the gall to publicly ‘apologise’ for the pain he is subjecting the masses to by increasing interest rates, in order to stoke devaluation of fiat money and collapse the economy.

    Lie to us. But don’t apologise for lying. And don’t pretend you care about the welfare of ordinary folk. We know you don’t.

    #121768
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    Oxy’s Slippery Slope clip sure got my attention. Always something new to learn on the TAE. The commentary the past few days has been extraordinary.

    #121769
    Germ
    Participant

    More confirmation of the pre-existing immunity much of the population had to SARS-CoV-2.

    “SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cell responses can originate from cross-reactive CMV-specific T cells”

    https://elifesciences.org/articles/82050

    #121770
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Do We Need The State?

    Do We Need The State?

    #121771
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    Sent my son a link yesterday to The Big Reset Movie posted on Rumble. Just looked on Rumble and it seems to be listed under several different titles, take your pick. Don’t remember who posted it here, but thank you, I thought it was worth my time to watch, even with the all the challenging subtitles.

    Anyway, my son watched the whole thing and called afterward. We talked about an hour on many of it’s implications. He has a busy life with work and family, which doesn’t allow him a lot of extra time do dig around for nuggets on the web, so every so often I send him something I think gives a good overview on a certain topic. As much as I hate burdening my kids with this sh#t, I’d much rather have them aware of what’s going on and chewing their nails off than blissfully ignorant.

    #121772
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Nice. Tim Watkins nails it again.

    By their excuses shall ye know them

    Vladimir Putin has added yet another superpower to his list this week by – presumably via some form of psychokinesis – causing an egg shortage across Britain. In reality of course, the shortage is the result of the 2021 fertiliser shortage which, on top of everything else, resulted in a shortage of chicken feed this year. Nevertheless, the “Putin ate my homework” excuse has become a default for the neoliberal right of the Tory Party. And the reason it is used so often, is that it diverts attention away from their own – very, very large role in all that is wrong with the UK economy just now.

    Not that the neoliberal left is any better. While they have no love for Putin, their go to excuse is that Brexit did it. Indeed for the five million or so “Remainiacs” who have never been able to move on from 24 June 2016, Brexit is the stated cause of everything and anything which has gone wrong since. But once again, the use of Brexit to cover their own role in collapsing the UK economy sounds a lot like denial. Because the Remainiac tendency were the loudest and shrillest voice against anyone with the temerity to suggest that locking down an economy for months and years on end might turn out to have some very negative consequences.

    The point is that while Brexit and the war in Ukraine have undoubtedly had negative consequences for the UK economy, these pale into insignificance when compared to the impact of two years of lockdowns imposed by the neoliberal right and supported with a vengeance by the neoliberal left. Even these though, are but a shadow of the damage now being wrought by the self-sanctioning of energy, which is driving high prices, generating the deepest recession in more than a century, causing growing food shortages, and deindustrialising a large part of Western Europe – again, a process loudly supported by both the neoliberal right and left.’

    In Brief: By their excuses shall ye know them, The leopard couldn’t change its spots, Peak charity

    It all had to come to an end anyway because it was all unsustainable. But the clever aspect is the way the criminals in London, Washington, Brussels, Wellington etc. blame Russia in general and Putin in particular for everything that goes wrong, whilst continuing to loot the till.

    #121773
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    The [US] Federal Reserve is “making losses for the first time in its history.”

    Another recapitalisation coming soon? Or complete unravelling?

    #121774
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    ‘Again, there will be no video or podcast versions today due to Covid.’

    What? You mean the ‘vaccinations’ didn’t work?

    #121775
    chooch
    Participant

    Noirette,

    You might find this discussion of interest.

    Also, I think I got the gist of this one even though I don’t speak French.

    #121776
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    ‘Do We Need The State?’

    No. But The State needs us; otherwise it would have no one to lie to and abuse and rob.

    #121777
    Oroboros
    Participant

    What It’s Like When The Lights Go Out In A Warzone

    A first hand report from Kharkiv

    Lira waxing poetic about no electricity in Ukronaziland.

    Living in a high rise is extra hard dragging water up without an elevator.

    He said it’s VERY dispiriting losing electricity. He said it sucks the life out of you.

    The next few weeks of massive missile strikes will finish off the electric grid.

    The Duran figures at least 8 MILLION Minimum Ukrainians will leave for Eurotardistan

    #121778
    Red
    Participant

    The human eco-predicament: Overshoot and the
    population conundrum
    William E. Rees

    Abstract
    The human enterprise is in overshoot, depleting essential ecosystems faster than
    they can regenerate and polluting the ecosphere beyond nature’s assimilative
    capacity. Overshoot is a meta-problem that is the cause of most symptoms of
    eco-crisis, including climate change, landscape degradation and biodiversity loss.
    The proximate driver of overshoot is excessive energy and material ‘throughput’
    to serve the global economy. Both rising incomes (consumption) and population
    growth contribute to the growing human eco-footprint, but increasing throughput
    due to population growth is the larger factor at the margin. (Egregious and
    widening inequality is a separate socio-political problem.) Mainstream approaches
    to alleviating various symptoms of overshoot merely reinforce the status quo.
    This is counter-productive, as overshoot is ultimately a terminal condition. The
    continuity of civilisation will require a cooperative, planned contraction of both
    the material economy and human populations, beginning with a personal to
    civilisational transformation of the fundamental values, beliefs, assumptions and
    attitudes underpinning neoliberal/capitalist industrial society.

    https://www.austriaca.at/0xc1aa5576%200x003dcfa1.pdf

    It would seem this problem is presently being worked one in real time.

    #121779
    Red
    Participant
    #121780
    Red
    Participant

    Since winter is upon us in the northern hemisphere there may be some extra time for reading. Here are a few more reports that some here may find interesting:

    https://www.simonmichaux.com/gtk-reports

    A sample from one of the papers:

    It becomes highly relevant then to examine how mining ecosystem interacts with the energy ecosystem.
    The IMF Metals Index and the Crude Oil Price Index correlates strongly. This suggests that the mining
    industrial operations to meet metal demand for the future are unlikely to go as planned.
    The implications are that the basic prediction of the original Limits to Growth systems study (Meadows et
    al 1972) was conceptually correct. Just so, it should be considered that the industrial ecosystem and the
    society it supports may soon contract in size. This implies that the current Linear Economy system is
    seriously unbalanced and is not remotely sustainable. The Limits to Growth conclusions suggest at some
    point, the global society and the global industrial ecosystem that support it will radically change form.
    It is clear that society consumes more mineral resources each year. It is also clear that society does not
    really understand its dependency on minerals to function. Availability of minerals could be an issue in the
    future, where it becomes too expensive to extract metals due to decreasing grade.
    This report proposes that the fundamental transformation of the global ecosystem predicted by the
    original Limits to Growth study, has been in progress since 2005, for the last 16 years. The industrial
    ecosystem is in the process of transitioning from growth based economics to contraction based
    economics. This will affect all sectors of the global ecosystem, all at the same time (in a 20 year window).
    We are there now and should respond accordingly.
    If the Limits to Growth study is truly a good model for predicting the industrial ecosystem, then the current
    industrial practice is inappropriate. The continued development of the economic growth paradigm would
    become increasingly ineffective, and a waste of valuable resources. All such efforts would be pushing in
    the wrong direction with poor results.
    The rules of industrialization and the sourcing of raw materials are changing into a new era of business
    model. Change is happening, whether we are ready for it or not.

    #121781
    Redneck
    Participant

    Those who have their fingers on the nuclear button have their assistants poring through media sites and if they see a headline that triggers them….well it is all over for the world.
    That such obvious bullshit gets into print and that people presumably beleive it is a very good indication of how stupid the media and it’s clickers have become.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fired-ap-reporter-who-risked-triggering-wwiii-actually-did-nothing-wrong

    #121783
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Funny, the peeps selling “overshoot,” limits to growth, etc, are the same people that insist any nation with negative population growth figures must accept unlimited numbers of people from positive population growth countries to facilitate further population growth. …thus continuing population growth in countries that would have started shrinking and enabling further population growth in other countries?

    Are B52’s flying round-the-clock missions out of Diego Garcia dropping condoms and family planning leaflets on positive population growth countries? Are the streams of migrants providing pressure-relief to positive growth countries being turned back, blocked, to force an end to further overshoot? Is international aid being made contingent on achieving a stop to population growth? Is the machine that demonizes Russia and gloats that its population is shrinking demonizing positive population growth countries at least as hard?

    And the “experts” leading us by the nose towards the solution never go first. Never. You first sir. Go on.

    #121784
    Redneck
    Participant
    #121785
    jb-hb
    Participant

    If it was persecution of Ukrainians, then why were Russian farmers, Russian landowners, etc getting persecuted and why was starvation occurring outside The Ukraine as well? Why were millions of Russians being fed into the Gulag system if it was all merely a prejudice against Ukrainians?

    Or maybe the USSR was just running agriculture, storage, and distribution along “enlightened,” new-thinking, “materialist” lines all over ssr-land

    #121786
    Redneck
    Participant

    So the new territories are full of saboteurs.
    Bring back the Lubyanka!

    https://en.topwar.ru/204403-borba-s-nacionalisticheskim-podpolem-metody-kotorye-stoilo-by-perenjat-u-nkvd.html

    A classic comment on the article.
    Old_Major
    2 November 2022 18: 40
    +9
    Need to fight. But our glorious Ministry of Internal Affairs abolished fingerprinting for newly-minted Russians. This is not stupidity, this is betrayal and sabotage. How much was drunk and received by our glorious policemen in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, history is silent. By the nature of my service, my fingerprints were taken three times for a personal file, but that was done by my own FSB OO.

    #121787
    Redneck
    Participant

    Russian commenter gets it right.
    EFIM LYUBIN
    15 November 2022 09: 18
    +8
    Power in Russia has been bought by the oligarchs from top to bottom, while capitalism has no nationality and only one ideology – profit at any cost! This is the reason for all the failures of Russia. The current Russian ideology has one basis – profit and robbery! What kind of patriotism can there be!
    Emergency
    Emergency
    15 November 2022 09: 34

    #121788
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Thank goodness in Ukraine free speech and a multiparty system still shine as a beacon on a hill in contrast to Russia. If only Putin had been doing something about those Oligarchs for all these years.

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