Dec 172022
 
 December 17, 2022  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Saul Leiter Phone call c1957

 

Moscow Reveals Capabilities Of Forthcoming ICBM Mobile Launcher (RT)
US Considers Providing Ukraine With More Weapons – Politico (RT)
Kissinger Outlines Ukraine Peace Proposal (RT)
Time For Ukraine Talks ‘Not Right Now’ – White House (RT)
Carthage Must Be Destroyed! (David Sant)
Approval of EU Support For Ukraine Lags Among Greeks (K.)
THE TWITTER FILES: Twitter… The FBI Subsidiary (ZH)
Twitter Docs Reveal FBI Pressure To Control Speech (RT)
EU Threatens Elon Musk With Sanctions (RT)
AOC Accuses Musk Of ‘Proto-fascism’ (RT)
What I Discovered At Twitter HQ (Jay Bhattacharya)
Truth And Consequences (Jim Kunstler)
Has ‘The End Of History’ Arrived In The Balkans? (Lukyanov)
Is Europe’s Energy Crisis Actually A Boon? (OP)
German MP Blasts ‘Absurd’ Price Cap On Russian Oil (RT)
The Petrodollar’s Long Goodbye (Prashad)

 

 

 

 

FTX O’Leary This is good.

 

 


Germany died suddenly

 

 

Dutch farmers nitrogen

 

 

Trump

 

 

 

 

Tucker vaccine risks

 

 

 

 

“..capable of evading any anti-ballistic missile system that could be fielded in the foreseeable future..”

Moscow Reveals Capabilities Of Forthcoming ICBM Mobile Launcher (RT)

Russia will commence the development of a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) system next year, which will be a significant upgrade on the existing Yars system, Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) Commander Sergey Karakaev has said. The new platform will have increased mobility to facilitate “swift redeployment and launch from any region anywhere in the Russian Federation,” he told Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star), the official newspaper of the country’s military. Karakaev offered no further details about the new project. The interview was published on Friday, ahead of SMF Day, which will be celebrated on Saturday. The SMF is the arm of the Russian military responsible for the country’s ground-based nuclear deterrence. It is currently “on the lookout for new technologies… which could be used to improve strategic weapon systems or create new ones,” Karakaev stated.


The silo-based Sarmat ICBM, as well as the Avangard and Yars systems, are examples of what is possible through such research, he added. The general praised the Sarmat missile in particular, which he said was capable of evading any anti-ballistic missile system that could be fielded in the foreseeable future. Russia approved production of the rocket following a successful test launch in April. Earlier this week, the Defense Ministry showcased the rearmament of an SMF site in central Russia by releasing footage, which showed two Yars missiles being loaded into silos. The ICBM has silo-launched and road-mobile variants.

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“..an additional 300 tanks, up to 700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 Howitzers would be needed to repel the Russian forces..”

US Considers Providing Ukraine With More Weapons – Politico (RT)

The US is planning to provide Ukraine with more weapons in the near future, extending the strike range of its military, Politico has reported. The media outlet, citing “six people with knowledge of the discussions,” claimed the move to provide additional supplies was prompted by concerns among top Ukrainian officials that Russia is amassing forces ahead of a major winter offensive. In its report on Thursday, Politico alleged that the Biden administration is currently entertaining the possibility of providing Kiev with, among other things, ground-launched small diameter bombs – high-precision munitions with a range of 150km (94 miles). Also under consideration, according to the article, is the delivery of joint direct attack munition kits, which are used to convert unguided aerial munitions into smart bombs.

These deliveries would be in addition to existing plans for the shipment of Patriot air-defense systems, Politico reported. Several US media outlets have indicated that those plans are in the final stages. Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia would certainly target these missile systems in Ukraine, should they be deployed there. On Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Patrick Ryder announced the expansion of a training program for Ukrainian military personnel at a US base on German soil. The number of troops attending there each month is reportedly expected to rise to around 500. In recent days, top Ukrainian officials – including the country’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, and Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba – have expressed concerns that Russia could launch a massive offensive as early as next month.

Zaluzhny did not rule out a new attempt by Moscow’s forces to take the Ukrainian capital Kiev. He also called on the West to provide Ukraine with more weaponry, saying that an additional 300 tanks, up to 700 infantry fighting vehicles, and 500 Howitzers would be needed to repel the Russian forces. While the US has already supplied Ukraine with short-range NASAMS air-defense systems, Kiev has been specifically requesting Patriot batteries since October, when Russia began massive missile and drone strikes on the country’s critical infrastructure. Moscow said the new strategy came in response to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge. Back in September, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned Washington that “it would cross the red line and become an actual party to the conflict,” should it provide Ukraine with longer-range missiles.

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“..the other territories Ukraine claims – Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea – “could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.”

Kissinger Outlines Ukraine Peace Proposal (RT)

Urgently negotiating an end to hostilities in Ukraine would prevent another world war, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger argued in an essay published on Friday. The 99-year-old statesman noted that, in 1916, the US government had the chance to end the First World War through diplomacy, but missed it for reasons of domestic politics. Kissinger laid out his reasoning in the December 17 issue of The Spectator, describing the current conflict as a “war in which two nuclear powers contest a conventionally armed country,” a clear reference to Ukraine being a proxy war between the US and Russia. The “peace process” Kissinger proposes would “link Ukraine to NATO, however expressed,” as he believes neutrality for Kiev is no longer an option.

He also wants Russia to withdraw to the lines before February 24, while the other territories Ukraine claims – Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea – “could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.” In addition to “confirming the freedom of Ukraine,” the arrangement would strive to “define a new international structure, especially for Central and Eastern Europe,” in which Russia should “eventually” find a place, he explained. While some would prefer “a Russia rendered impotent by the war,” Kissinger disagrees, arguing that Moscow’s “historical role should not be degraded.” Dismantling Russia could turn its vast territory into a “contested vacuum,” where “competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence” and neighbors could seek to claim territory by force, all in the presence of “thousands of nuclear weapons.”

In substance, this is the same proposal Kissinger had first floated in May, for which he was labeled an enemy of Ukraine and added to the notorious ‘Peacemaker’ kill list. In an interview earlier this month, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky categorically rejected any sort of ceasefire that did not take Kiev’s claimed 1991 borders as the starting point. It was also unclear whether Moscow would accept any Western-mediated ceasefire at all, after former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s admission that the 2014 Minsk armistice was intended to “give Ukraine time” to prepare for war. What’s fresh in Kissinger’s Spectator essay is his reasoning. He points to August 1916, at the height of the First World War, when the warring powers sought US mediation to end the unprecedented bloodshed.

Though “a peace based on the modified status quo ante was within reach,” President Woodrow Wilson delayed the talks until after he could get re-elected in November. By then it was too late, and the war would go on for two more years, “irretrievably damaging Europe’s established equilibrium.” Asked about Kissinger’s proposal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “eager to give the article a thorough reading,” but “hasn’t had a chance to do so yet, unfortunately.” Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that would never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

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“..if and when the diplomacy is ripe, they will be in the best possible position at the negotiating table.”

Time For Ukraine Talks ‘Not Right Now’ – White House (RT)

It is not yet time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan argued in an interview on Friday. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger – who held the same post in the early 1970s – has said talks should happen sooner rather than later. “We don’t know where this is going to end up,” Sullivan said of the conflict, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment think tank in Washington. “What we do know is that it’s our job to continue to sustain our military support to Ukraine, so they are in the best possible position on the battlefield, so that if and when the diplomacy is ripe, they will be in the best possible position at the negotiating table.” “That moment is not right now,” he added. According to Sullivan, Ukraine has won a series of battles, “repelled the Russian invaders from most of the country,” and is now “fighting to reclaim the remaining land.”

He called it “a remarkable thing” and said the Biden administration is asking Congress for “a substantial amount of further resources” to ensure “Ukraine has the means to fight this war.” Meanwhile, Americans training Ukrainian troops on the ground have spoken of mounting casualties and Ukraine’s chief of general staff, Valery Zaluzhny, is asking for more tanks, armored vehicles and artillery than most NATO members have in their arsenal, much less to spare. The US and its allies have supplied Ukraine with tube and rocket artillery, air defense systems, small arms, vehicles and ammunition, allowing Kiev to fight long after its domestic capabilities had been degraded. Russia has condemned the shipments as needlessly prolonging the conflict and increasing casualties, repeatedly warning the West that it risks becoming an open party to the conflict.

Earlier in the day, Sullivan applauded Japan’s new national security strategy, which will see Tokyo embark on massive military expansion citing the “strategic challenge posed by China.” The Japanese constitution – drafted mainly by the US occupation authorities after the Second World War – had renounced war and limited the country to a “self-defense” force. There was no indication that 46-year-old Sullivan was aware of his predecessor’s essay in The Spectator, in which the 99-year-old Kissinger called for an armistice in Ukraine before the conflict spins out of control. He pointed to the missed US opportunity to negotiate an end to the First World War in 1916, which led to millions more deaths and a far less stable post-war world that eventually collapsed into another global conflict.

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“One might say that the West forgot the art of diplomacy..”

Carthage Must Be Destroyed! (David Sant)

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not the result of losing a war. It was caused by the failed policies of a centralized economy, exacerbated by American manipulation of the oil markets, and a costly American-backed guerilla war in Afghanistan. The United States moved in with “shock therapy” economic advisors and took the opportunity to restructure a confused and gullible Russia, including writing a new constitution. For Russia the collapse of the Soviet Union had many similarities to the loss of Carthage in the Second Punic War. Despite making peace with their former adversary, and honoring their treaties, Russia found that she could never be accepted as a friend on equal terms by the Western world order. And this was for the very same reason that Carthage could never be tolerated by Rome.

Russia was and is in every way an equal to the Anglo-American Empire. Ever since Vladimir Putin became President of Russia, the chorus of the West has become louder and louder that Putin must go. While they cannot say it aloud yet, what they really mean is “Russia must be destroyed!” If Russia had continued the policy of submission to Western control that was begun by Boris Yeltsin, we can be assured that Moscow would have eventually met the same fate as Carthage from the Anglo-American Empire. However, the appointment of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia derailed their plans. Under his rule Russia has steadily reasserted her former leadership and strength against the machinations of the Anglo-American Empire.

While at first Mr. Putin made a genuine effort to be a “partner” with the West, by the year 2011 it was clear that the West would never accept Russia as a friend or an equal. The West had enjoyed two decades of bossing everyone else around and had learned to enjoy giving orders rather than negotiating. One might say that the West forgot the art of diplomacy. After watching in horror the NATO-led destructions of Serbia, Libya, and Syria, the Kremlin began asserting itself with foreign policy problems that directly affected Russian security interests starting in 2013.

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Harder to brainwash.

Approval of EU Support For Ukraine Lags Among Greeks (K.)

Deviating from the general mood in Europe, a large number of Greeks hesitate to declare their approval of the European Union’s backing for Ukraine following the Russian invasion. In the relevant question of the Parliament’s Eurobarometer for autumn 2022, a majority of citizens in the 24 member-states approve of the position taken by the EU, with the exception of Slovakia, Bulgaria and Greece, which have the lowest percentages (49%, 48% and 48% respectively). The highest levels are recorded in Sweden (97%), Finland (95%), the Netherlands (93%), Portugal (92%) and Denmark (92%). The same survey showed that three quarters of European citizens (73%) agree with the specific measures taken by the EU, namely sanctions against the Russian government, as well as economic, military and humanitarian support to Ukraine. Again, Greece is at the bottom of the ranking, with only 46%.

Loffredo

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And the FBI works for the DNC, Pfizer and Raytheon..

THE TWITTER FILES: Twitter… The FBI Subsidiary (ZH)

Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth. Some are mundane, like San Francisco agent Elvis Chan wishing Roth a Happy New Year along with a reminder to attend “our quarterly call next week.” Others are requests for information into Twitter users related to active investigations. But a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.


The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts. The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.

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“..she asked whether there would be “impediments” to passing along classified information to industry partners. In response, the FBI was “adamant” that there were “no impediments to sharing.”

Twitter Docs Reveal FBI Pressure To Control Speech (RT)

Twitter has maintained “constant and pervasive” contacts with the FBI and other US intelligence agencies for several years, according to internal company documents leaked to reporters. The files appear to show a concerted government campaign to blacklist content labeled as “misinformation.” Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday, the sixth installment of the ‘Twitter Files’ revealed additional pressure placed on the website by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) between January 2020 and as recently as last month, largely focused on moderating particular posts and accounts discussing American elections. While earlier documents indicated high-level coordination between intelligence agencies and Twitter, the latest files suggest such collusion took place on a larger scale than was previously known.

In a period of less than three years, the site’s former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth alone exchanged more than 150 emails with the FBI. Prior to Friday, Roth was the only executive said to have had regular, direct contacts with the bureau, however the new files show that legal exec Stacia Cardille also held weekly meetings with not only the FBI, but the DHS, Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) beginning in September. In a letter addressed to Twitter’s former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker – himself an ex-lawyer for the FBI – Cardille noted that she asked whether there would be “impediments” to passing along classified information to industry partners. In response, the FBI was “adamant” that there were “no impediments to sharing.”

“This passage underscores the unique one-big-happy-family vibe between Twitter and the FBI. With what other firm would the FBI blithely agree to ‘no impediments’ to classified information?” Taibbi asked. A number of messages sent to Twitter by the FBI contain explicit requests to take down certain posts, or even ban accounts altogether. In one case, the agency flagged so much “possible violative content” that Twitter staffers were later seen congratulating each other in an internal company chat for the “monumental undertaking” of reviewing it. Another missive sent on November 5, 2022 from the FBI’s ‘National Election Command Post’ provided a list of 25 accounts that “may warrant additional action.” Twitter was quick to permanently ban seven of those handles, while it temporarily suspended another and deleted eight tweets for alleged “civil misinformation policy violations.”

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EU=hot air.

EU Threatens Elon Musk With Sanctions (RT)

The EU has warned Elon Musk that Twitter could be targeted by sanctions after the platform owned by the entrepreneur suspended several journalists for allegedly sharing real-time location data about the billionaire and his family. “News about arbitrary suspension of journalists on Twitter is worrying,” wrote EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova in a tweet on Friday. “EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights,” she said, adding that these rights are reinforced under the recently adopted European Media Freedom Act.= “[Elon Musk] should be aware of that. There are red lines.

And sanctions, soon,” Jourova warned, as the Digital Services Act is set to start coming into force next summer and will be fully implemented by 2024. Her threats come after Twitter suspended around half-a-dozen journalists on Thursday who reported and shared links to ElonJet, which provides real-time tracking of Musk’s personal flights. Musk has explained the decision by stating that the information being shared was “basically assassination coordinates” and pointed to Twitter’s terms of service, which prohibit doxxing – the illegal publishing of personal information – of anyone by anyone. “Same doxxing rules apply to ‘journalists’ as to everyone else,” the billionaire wrote on Thursday.

Twitter has previously suspended the original @elonjet account, as well as other similar flight-tracking channels owned by Florida student Jack Sweeney, who had been posting real-time data on private flights of the world’s wealthiest men, including Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Musk – a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” – purchased Twitter for $44 billion in late October. Back then he initially promised not to suspend any accounts that were exercising free speech, noting that that extended “even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”

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“Take a beat and lay off the proto-fascism. Maybe try putting down your phone,” the New York congresswoman suggested. Musk brushed off AOC’s criticism by simply replying: “You first.”

AOC Accuses Musk Of ‘Proto-fascism’ (RT)

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, commonly referred to as AOC, has joined the backlash against Elon Musk after Twitter suspended several journalists for allegedly violating the platform’s anti-doxxing policies while reporting on the ElonJet flight tracker. AOC accused Musk of abusing his power as the new owner of Twitter and told him to “lay off the proto-fascism.” That was after he temporarily suspended half-a-dozen journalists from CNN, the New York Times, and The Washington Post, among others, for reporting on and providing the links to ElonJet – a flight tracker that posted real-time flight data about Musk’s private jet.

Musk had accused the journalists of sharing information that was “basically assassination coordinates” and cited Twitter’s terms of service, which prohibit doxxing – publishing the personal information and real-time coordinates of other people. In a series of Twitter posts on Friday, Cortez insisted that Musk should not have suspended the reporters because he was “a public figure,” suggesting that being the victim of such location information-sharing comes with the territory. “You’re a public figure. An extremely controversial and powerful one,” AOC wrote. “I get feeling unsafe, but descending into abuse of power + erratically banning journalists only increases the intensity around you.”

“Take a beat and lay off the proto-fascism. Maybe try putting down your phone,” the New York congresswoman suggested. Musk brushed off AOC’s criticism by simply replying: “You first.” The billionaire had previously stated that he was fine with any criticism coming his way over his handling of Twitter, which he purchased in late October for $44 billion, but insisted that threatening the safety of his family was over the line. “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” he wrote.

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“I could have bought an island with the $44 billion, but this was a much better use of the money.”

What I Discovered At Twitter HQ (Jay Bhattacharya)

You spoke with Elon for almost an hour. How was your conversation? The topic, of course, was censorship. My sense is that he bought Twitter in part because he is deeply offended by the idea that something like Twitter, which is so important for public communication… had put their thumb on the scale. It wasn’t specifically about Covid. Generally, his sense was that one side of the conversation wasn’t being heard on many, many issues… I think he views this as: he’s in a very privileged position that allows him to restore free speech, allow for free discussion of ideas. And he wants to use what gifts he’s had for that purpose. He even made a joke: I could have bought an island with the $44 billion, but this was a much better use of the money.

Was he a lockdown sceptic during the pandemic? I think he generally was a lockdown sceptic… He famously, early in the pandemic, protested against being locked down when the shutdown orders came, and then moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas… He was very clear that he was aware of the harms of lockdowns. He mentioned the early days of the pandemic — that he had a number of plants in China, with tens of thousands of employees. He said: “Look, if somebody dies in amongst my employees, I find out immediately, because we stop paying them.” But he noticed that there were very, very few deaths on that metric early on. So his view was that it wasn’t clear that the case fatality rate numbers that were coming out matched reality in China itself, even from the earliest days of the pandemic… Certainly at this point, he was very sympathetic to my message about the harms to the poor of the world threatened by the economic dislocation caused by lockdowns, the closing of schools — all of that I think he opposed.

So then an engineer shows you your files. What did you find out? An engineer comes to me, we talk in this little cubicle. And so it turns out that there are two major sources of information for the journalists that are looking at this. First, there’s this tool, which Bari Weiss made famous: for each person, they’ll have the status of the person and history of the status of that person… That includes some personal identifying information, which is why you’re not seeing a dump of those files for everybody, because they’re not supposed to share that… I had got permission to look at myself of course. And I asked for permission to look at Martin Kulldorff.

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“The Big News Media may not be able to avoid reporting on it, especially with Twitter loosened up, and their lying attempts to spin events is going to look pathetic..”

Truth And Consequences (Jim Kunstler)

Even if NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The WashPo, and the rest of the Big News Media mafia ignore the Twitter Files story, the revolution at Twitter is going to shake their windows and rattle their walls. There will be free debate in 2023 on this social media platform. News and ideas will be set loose across the landscape, and, for the first time in years, reality will have a chance to compete with the bad faith narratives of a regime at war against its own people. We’ll have to see how long this lasts before the Intel Community tries to shut Twitter down, ramp up a campaign to defame it, or blow it up as a viable business. Or make a move to, shall we say, neutralize the person behind the revolution there.

The more that free speech is actually permitted on Twitter, the more every other platform will look like a lame organ of propaganda, especially when it comes to issues that really matter such as the deadly consequences of the mRNA “vaccines,” the shady doings around recent US elections, the actual condition of the US economy, the perilous folly of “Joe Biden’s” war in Ukraine (and the family grifting operation that prompted it), and the evil machinations of the Intel Community itself. In about three weeks, the Party of Chaos will be swept out of power in the US House of Representatives. Their opponents will take control of all the House committee chairs, with subpoena power to compel the testimony of public figures who have managed to avoid answering questions for years. The Big News Media may not be able to avoid reporting on it, especially with Twitter loosened up, and their lying attempts to spin events is going to look pathetic when it is instantly contrasted with free analysis and informed debate in the public arena.

You can’t overstate what an advantage the insidious takeover of social media gave to forces seeking to wreck the country, though the effects have not been adequately explored yet. The people remain bamboozled over the Covid-19 operation especially. It certainly wasn’t some random act by Mother Nature, not with US public health agencies supporting gain-of-function research on coronaviruses from Ukraine to North Carolina to Wuhan, China. And the subsequent damage caused by the government’s response to the outbreak was either an epic fiasco of inept officialdom, or something that smells like mass murder. Dr. Anthony Fauci’s little trick to so far avoid answering questions about these matters was simply to not use the term “gain-of-function” in his correspondence arranging grants for it — especially after President Barack Obama banned that type of research by its name in 2014. So when asked about gain-of-function, he could just lie with abandon. After that simple ruse is exposed, the patent and royalty benefits enjoyed by Dr. Fauci — who doubled his net worth after 2019 — will be dragged into the light of day.

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“Current events in northern Kosovo resemble an attempt to bring about the “end of history” in the Balkan context..”

Has ‘The End Of History’ Arrived In The Balkans? (Lukyanov)

Current events in northern Kosovo resemble an attempt to bring about the “end of history” in the Balkan context. Of course, the same one that was promised 30-odd years ago, on a global scale, hasn’t happened, but the idea behind it has remained in people’s minds. Francis Fukuyama, the author of the concept, later admitted that he had been hasty and had failed to take into account important circumstances in the development of societies. However, he hasn’tabandoned it, and continues to believe that the predicted triumph of Western liberal ideology, and the corresponding way of life, will still take place, just later than expected. What has Kosovo got to do with this? The disintegration of Yugoslavia has taken as long as the concept of “the end of history” has existed.

And it has been, perhaps, the clearest example of what it meant in practice. The nature of that state – a socialist federal republic – was diametrically opposed to what was thought to be right after the Cold War. Firstly, socialism as a socio-political construct was simply written off as having failed. Secondly, it was a complex federation dominated by the largest ethnic group. This, to be fair,could be described as being in the spirit of multiculturalism, which has become popular in developed countries over the past couple of decades. But no, because multicultural communities have only been welcomed if they were part of a process that develops from homogeneous to heterogeneous through immigration and the influx of new citizens of different origins.

Thus, multinational states like Yugoslavia or the USSR (or even Czechoslovakia) have instead been perceived through the prism of self-determination. In other words, national aspirations were worthy of support but the desire to maintain (con)federative unions was equated with imperial ambitions.

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“..now that winter proper has begun and the cold is settling in, consumption will increase, whatever the price of gas.”

Is Europe’s Energy Crisis Actually A Boon? (OP)

The energy crisis that began last year in Europe and dramatically escalated following the EU response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen many in government worry about the survival of the continent during the winter. Yet not all see such a bleak picture. In fact, some believe that not only is the worst over for Europe but that the crisis actually did the EU a favor. That favor took the form of accelerating the buildout in renewables and the restart of hydrocarbon-fueled power plants. This take, which is certainly not very common right now, came from one investment manager, Per Lekander, who is managing partner at a firm called Clean Energy Transition LLP. Speaking to CNBC this week, Lekander said that Russia had, in fact, very little to do with Europe’s crisis, and it could even be said Vladimir Putin did Europe a favor.

“This [the crisis] is the consequence of long term under-investments in conventional, long term red tape in renewables and then these political closures of nuclear, coal, lignite, etcetera,” Lekander told CNBC. He then went on to add that the measures that European countries took after Russia began responding to EU sanctions by reducing gas flows went a long way toward ensuring that the continent would survive this winter. Energy demand reduction was one of these measures, according to the financier, and returning to hydrocarbons for power generation was another. A third one was the planned reduction in red tape in wind and solar power system construction—obstacles that these two industries have been complaining about for years.

It could be argued that this energy demand reduction that has allowed Europe to save on gas was a result of exorbitant prices rather than any voluntary change in energy consumption behavior patterns. Indeed, millions of people across the continent are being hit with electricity bills that are substantially higher than last year’s bills because of the international gas price inflation caused by the tightening of supply following the EU sanctions on Russia and Russia’s easy to predict response. The sabotage of Nord Stream added to this tightening and pushed prices higher. Another reason for the lower demand was the warm European autumn, as many noted at the time. As the weather was warmer than usual, people’s heating needs were lower. Yet now that winter proper has begun and the cold is settling in, consumption will increase, whatever the price of gas.

Indeed, the worst might not be over. The Guardian reported this week that Germany was at risk of gas shortages because it had failed to hit its consumption reduction target. The reason it had missed it—the target is 20 percent of consumption—was the colder weather last week, the head of the country’s energy regulator said. The European Union last month approved a gas consumption reduction target of 15 percent, but Germany was more ambitious because of its high reliance on the commodity. Whether the rest of Europe would be able to hit the 15-percent target is yet to be seen because, as Klaus Mueller said, “With temperatures of -10C [14F], gas consumption shoots up dramatically.”

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“..such policies are “leveled against” ordinary consumers across the bloc.”

German MP Blasts ‘Absurd’ Price Cap On Russian Oil (RT)

Imposing an artificial ceiling on the price paid for Russian oil will provoke an increase in prices for the commodity, the chairman of the Bundestag committee on energy, Klaus Ernst, said in an interview with TASS, calling the measure “absurd.” Berlin is planning to entirely abandon energy imports from Russia, according to Ernst, who stressed that the operations at an oil refinery in the German city of Schwedt are critically dependent on Russian supplies. “It is absolutely clear that when a ceiling is introduced on energy prices, the object targeted by the measure will inevitably reduce the supply. It is clear that this will be counterproductive, because the price will rise,” Ernst argued. “In this regard, I think that such a restriction is absurd.”


The price limit on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel, was introduced earlier this month by the EU, the G7 countries, Australia and Norway. The measure bans Western companies from providing insurance and other services to vessels loaded with Russian oil, unless the cargo is bought at or below the price indicated. The EU is currently debating a similar step targeting Russian gas supplies. According to Ernst, the policies pursued by Brussels are “self-destructive.” “The EU deliberately excluded pipeline oil supplies from sanctions. The government rejects them, although there is no need for this,” he said, adding that such policies are “leveled against” ordinary consumers across the bloc.

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“..they will do so slowly, as they both remain exposed to the U.S. economy..”

The Petrodollar’s Long Goodbye (Prashad)

At this first China-GCC summit, Xi urged the Gulf monarchs to “make full use of the Shanghai Petrol and Gas Exchange as a platform to conduct oil and gas sales using Chinese currency.” Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia suggested that it might accept Chinese yuan rather than U.S. dollars for the oil it sells to China. While no formal announcement was made at the GCC summit nor in the joint statement issued by China and Saudi Arabia, indications abound that these two countries will move closer toward using the Chinese yuan to denominate their trade. However, they will do so slowly, as they both remain exposed to the U.S. economy. (China holds just under $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds).

Talk of conducting China-Saudi trade in yuan has raised eyebrows in the United States, which for 50 years has relied on the Saudis to stabilise the dollar. In 1971, the U.S. government withdrew the dollar from the gold standard and began to rely on central banks around the world to hold monetary reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and other U.S. financial assets. When oil prices skyrocketed in 1973, the U.S. government decided to create a system of dollar seigniorage through Saudi oil profits. In 1974, U.S. Treasury Secretary William Simon — fresh off the trading desk at the investment bank Salomon Brothers — arrived in Riyadh with instructions from U.S. President Richard Nixon to have a serious conversation with the Saudi oil minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani.

Simon proposed that the U.S. purchase large amounts of Saudi oil in dollars and that the Saudis use these dollars to buy U.S. Treasury bonds and weaponry and invest in U.S. banks as a way to recycle vast Saudi oil profits. And so, the petrodollar was born, which anchored the new dollar-denominated world trade and investment system. If the Saudis even hinted towards withdrawing this arrangement, which would take at least a decade to implement, it would seriously challenge the monetary privilege afforded to the U.S. As Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security, told The Wall Street Journal, “The oil market, and by extension the entire global commodities market, is the insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency. If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Play
https://twitter.com/i/status/1603760623858376704

 

 

 

 

Wood art
https://twitter.com/i/status/1603925323166646272

 

 


Wat Samphran is a Buddhist temple in Amphoe Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom province, around 40 km west of Bangkok. The temple is notable for its 17-story tall pink cylindrical building with a gigantic dragon sculpture curling around the entire height

 

 

Goose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1603508898421673985

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle December 17 2022

Viewing 33 posts - 41 through 73 (of 73 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #123688
    zerosum
    Participant

    A good compilation of wat we know.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/setting-record-straight-ivermectin
    Setting The Record Straight On Ivermectin
    Authored by David Henderson and Charles Hooper via The Brownstone Institute,

    Setting the Record Straight on Ivermectin


    The COVID-19 pandemic brought us a panoply of lies and evidence-light declarations that were less intended to inform Americans than to consolidate power and buy time.

    #123689
    Germ
    Participant

    @ Bosco – “Compassion is the constant act of giving oneself to others.”

    I won’t be “giving” myself, or my wife, or my son to this.
    Nope – no compassion at all.
    None. Zip. Nada.

    The damage these fuckers have done.

    Top Virologist and Member of FDA Panel Who Voted For Covid Vaccine Emergency Approval Dies Suddenly

    Top Virologist and Member of FDA Panel Who Voted For Covid Vaccine Emergency Approval Dies Suddenly (Video)

    TVASF

    #123690
    Dora
    Participant

    @Germ
    Thanks for providing these links. They’re helpful.

    #123691
    Bishko
    Participant

    New study shows that 100% of people who drink water die. Scientist and Researcher Arnot Fudwit claims that everyone who drinks water dies. “The correlation is absolute! There are no exceptions. We have also found a direct correlation between consumption and death rates.” He added. “And this is pure clean water! No toxins at all!”

    “If someone drinks more than their body weight in water in a 24 hour period, then they die much, much sooner.” He said. “The correlation is uncanny.”

    “We also found that for people who drink 0.01 Percent of their body weight every 24 hours also die much sooner, but it takes them up to 7 days to die. These are astounding facts!” He exclaimed. “We have many charts that clearly show these effects as absolutely real, but more research is needed.”
    “We know that climate change can effect the distribution of water on the land so we have been granted a $50 million government stipend to continue this unprecedented study.” Fudwit added.

    #123692
    John Day
    Participant

    @Germ: TVASF Thanks for all of the supporting exhibits. I’m sorry they exist.

    @DBS: Henry Kissinger has always represented Rockefeller Family Interests.
    He is an experienced negotiator.
    His opening position of “cease-fire, then negotiate” is quite standard.
    Putin is studying it… O’Biden, not so much.

    #123693
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    ?


    The Trump Administration previously interceded on both fronts by normalizing diplomatic relations with Vladimir Putin and Russia while it forced a less cooperative and more oppositional China to toe the line by establishing no-nonsense and firmer diplomatic relations.

    There are reasons for this.

    For one, Putin and Trump found common ground in their mutual opposition to this Globalist cartel and its intrusions on national sovereignty globally.

    For the second, China is the current hammer to all nails and its being wielded by these Globalists to accomplish their geopolitical objectives. Ergo, with Russia there was an interface of cooperation and with China, it was an interface of opposition.

    https://politicalmoonshine.substack.com/p/war-at-all-costs

    #123694
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Looking for absurdity? The mainstream media of Airstrip Five have plenty. For example:

    ‘Putin’s secret escape plan revealed.’

    Looking for depth of thinking and in-depth analysis of our collective predicament? Not so easy, but it is around if you look in the right places:

    FRIDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2022

    The short lifespan of technological civilizations and the future of Homo sapiens
    by Andrew Glikson

    In his book ‘Collapse’ (2011) Jared Diamond portrays the fate of societies which Choose to Fail or Succeed. On a larger scale the Fermi’s paradox suggests that advanced technological civilizations may constitute ephemeral entities in the galaxy, destined to collapse over short periods. Such an interpretation of Fermi’s paradox, corroborated by recent terrestrial history, implies that the apparent absence of radio signals from Milky Way planets and beyond may be attributed to an inherently self-destructive nature of civilizations which reached the ability to propagate radio waves, consistent with Carl Sagan’s views. It can be expected therefore that the number of advanced technological societies in the universe will be proportional to their average lifetime, perhaps lasting no more than a few centuries. Inexplicably, the behavior of Homo “sapiens” reveals the reality of Fermi’s paradox, unless humans can wake up in time.

    Since the onset of the Neolithic about ~10,000 years ago open-ended combustion of wood, coal, oil, methane and gas for production of steam power and electricity (Figure 1), and of uranium to generate nuclear power, constrain the life expectancy of industrial civilizations through proliferation of greenhouse gases, alteration of the chemistry of the atmosphere and proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, testifying to the relevance of Fermi’s paradox in the 20-21 centuries.

    Geological and astronomical studies establish Earth is unique among the terrestrial planets in harboring advanced life forms, including colonial life since as early as ~3.5 billion years ago. Should the fate of Homo sapiens be recorded, history would tell that, while the atmosphere was overheating, oceans acidifying and radioactivity rising, humans never ceased to saturate the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, mine uranium, unleash fatal wars and fire rockets at the planets. All the time indulging in sports games and inundating the airwaves with gratuitous words, false promises, misconstrued assumptions and simple lies ─ betraying their future generations and a multitude of species on the only haven of life known in the solar system.

    In a new paper titled ‘Global warming in the pipeline’, Hansen et al. (2022) state: “glacial-to-interglacial global temperature change implies that fast-feedback equilibrium climate sensitivity is at least ~4°C for doubled CO₂ with likely range 3.5-5.5°C. Greenhouse gas (GHG) climate forcing is 4.1 W/m² larger in 2021 than in 1750, equivalent to 2xCO₂ forcing. Global warming in the pipeline is greater than prior estimates. Eventual global warming due to today’s GHG forcing alone — after slow feedbacks operate — is about 10°C. Human-made aerosols are a major climate forcing, mainly via their effect on clouds … A hinge-point in global warming occurred in 1970 as increased GHG warming outpaced aerosol cooling, leading to global warming of 0.18°C per decade.”

    The inevitable consequence is a shift in the position of the Earth’s climate zones, a decline in the Earth’s albedo (a climatologically significant ~0.5 W/m² decrease over two decades), a rise in greenhouse gases at a geologically unprecedented rate of 2-3 ppm/year), acidification of the oceans (by about 26 percent), receding ice sheets, rising sea levels (~20 cm since 1900), changes in vegetation, forests and soils, a shift in state of the climate and mass extinction, with humans are driving around one million species to extinction.

    For longer than 50 years few were aware that a rise in atmospheric CO₂ on the scale of ~100 ppm CO₂ at the annual rate of 2 – 3 ppm per year, could lead to the unhabitability of large parts of Earth (The Uninhabitable Earth, by David Wallace-Wells) (Figure 2A). Now we find ourselves surrounded by the consequences ─ hydrocarbon saturation of air and water, runaway global heating, acidification, dissemination of micro-plastics, habitat destruction, radioactive overload, proliferation of chemical weapons ─ In confirmation of the reality of Fermi’s Paradox……..

    https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-short-lifespan-of-technological-civilizations-and-the-future-of-homo-sapiens.html

    Jared Diamond’s book Collapse was 2005, not 2011. I know because I referred to it in a television interview in 2007 for the local television station that got taken down by the Empire of Lies a few months after I did the interviews.

    Everything else in the above Artic News item looks accurate to me.

    I would be very happy to hear from anyone who can spot scientific inaccuracies in the above article.

    I am not interested in ad hominem attacks on me for stating fundamental truths that people are uncomfortable with.

    Anyone thinking of launching an ad hominem attack on me can fuck off before they even start.

    #123695
    John Day
    Participant

    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/tulsi-talks-to-tucker

    In Vague War Reporting https://www.johndayblog.com/2022/12/vague-war-reporting.html Colonel Douglas Macgregor (US Army ret.) spoke about the need to replace the Washington “courtiers” in the “court of the American empire”. This statement came at the end of an hour of giving the specific problems within this globalist elite class, who have grown up without comprehending the interests of the American people.
    This discussion now appears to be open. The Overton window just got expanded as a wrecking ball opened a hole in the wall next to it. My personal read of this encourages me. It seems that a broad movement is in place to replace the existing oligarchy, or at least their existing “courtiers” in the Imperial city of Washington DC. I have long known that there was another, weaker faction in the halls of power, which I have called the “rationalists” and some call the “white hats”.
    It seemed that Donald Trump sought to serve nationalist interests during his presidency, and imperfectly so, to be sure. The power structure which was in place from the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama years was expecting Clinton-II, and tried to keep those plans warm, while sabotaging, “resisting” and sniping at the elected president and his cabinet. Many believe that Barack Obama is now operating the O’Biden drone from his Washington command center. It’s plausible.
    The Empire has had a debacle in Afghanistan, and the NATO proxy-army in Ukraine is now heavily outgunned by Russia artillery, as the west cannot supply the required ammunition or the big guns rapidly enough to keep up with the Russian barrages. Inexperienced Ukrainian recruits of all ages are dying in freezing, muddy trenches. That is the main cost of maintaining the pretense that Russia might not win this war. Thousands of Polish “volunteers” are also dying, as attested to by funeral services in Poland.
    The current western empire, which does not actually serve “American” interests, cannot negotiate any practical closure to this failing war, as the largest and best equipped NATO army in Europe has mostly passed through the Russian meat grinder, and the “Ukrainian army” now in place is a lot like the German army of 1944, not the Wehrmacht of 1939, which it resembled a year ago. In order to back down from the unipolar-world posture of the post-9/11 Global War On Terror years, in order to engage the multipolar world, and in order to coordinate the step-down from the American Petrodollar as global reserve currency, the world will need a western “Partner” which is “Agreement Capable”.
    It seems that history is about to demand a different administration in Washington DC, an administration different-enough to plausibly be able to negotiate, and then to abide by global treaties and international laws. This administration, to be plausible, cannot tout “American Exceptionalism”, but can certainly pursue and defend the actual interests of the American people and American industry.
    In our current world, with declining cheap-oil and likely declining total energy to drive economies, the successful economic strategy will no longer be to burn as much oil, coal and gas as rapidly as possible, but rather to refine economic goals to be practical in long decades of declining energy availability. Some of us were raised by depression era parents and grandparents, who valued things which were well made and lasted a long time. Many of us have been frustrated by modern appliances, which have electronic malfunctions after a few years, when the rest of the washing machine or stove could work for 30 more years, or longer. Most modern automobiles also have artificially shortened life-spans for similar reasons of electronic lifespan being shorter than mechanical lifespan with reasonable repairs.
    Will the United States be able to approach or realize a change-of-management by 2024-2025?
    Even sooner?
    This seems like too short a period for there to be an actual change-in-ownership in the American oligarchy, but some oligarchs might step back from management, while others take more of a hand. Another factor in the management change will be the necessary decline of globalist interests, in favor of rebuilding industry and infrastructure within the United States, with American workers.
    There was a “New Deal” social contract negotiated in the US in the FDR and post-war years. American workers have been progressively dispossessed since 1976, which was the most-egalitarian year for American paychecks. The squeeze on American labor via inflation, while paychecks shrank in absolute terms, was long used as the “fix” for various economic ills. It has recently been topped-off by increasing consumer-debt and college-loan debt. These debts have been made possible by falling interest rates, which allowed them to be rolled-over. That is over. The problems really need to be addressed and remedied now.
    New management in The United States of America will need to renegotiate the social contract with American workers, which will need to be fair and equitable, and will need to reward people for their work. A lot of problems need to be worked out, by a lot of competent people at all levels. American workers and their families will need to experience actual benefit from their best-efforts, not just be paid an hourly wage.
    This same new management should also negotiate America’s place in a more cooperative international order as a nation, not as the hegemon.
    Americans have a lot to offer. Ocean trade needs to be protected from piracy. The US navy has been prominent in that role, and could usefully remain prominent, but how would that be funded? There are a lot of questions like that, which need to be negotiated and agreed upon.

    Tulsi Gabbard, provides the warmth and Aloha on her new show, interviewing Tucker Carlson as the guest this time, and they talk as the friends they are. Tucker starts talking about his awareness of racing towards his own death, seeing this as a core of wisdom. Life, Death, Power, the CIA , Washington corruption bubble, rigid political factionalism, and the coming American collapse. Tucker talks about his search for wisdom and his practices of prayer and meditation. Tulsi, too.

    Tulsi Gabbard interviews Tucker Carlson

    Tucker Carlson has the most watched American TV news show. Carlson’s unnamed source had access within the CIA to the withheld CIA documents regarding JFK’s assassination. This is made into the focus of the show, that the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination, and every director since then has known it.
    Mike Pompeo declined to accept an interview on the show.
    Tucker Carlson: Source says yes, the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination
    https://www.foxnews.com/video/6317311778112

    #123696
    John Day
    Participant

    You will have already seen some of these links/stories today, but they contribute to the ensemble, so please excuse.

    ​ ​In the latest release of ‘THE TWITTER FILES,’ journalist Matt Taibbi details how Twitter acted as a ‘subsidiary’ of the FBI.
    ​ ​Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.
    Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.​..​
    ​..A​ surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low-follower accounts.
    ​ ​The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.
    ​ ​Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twitter-files-twitter-fbi-subsidiary

    Social Media Coordination Between DOJ And FBI Is Not Limited To Twitter: Devin Nunes
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/social-media-coordination-between-doj-and-fbi-not-limited-twitter-devin-nunes

    ​ Michael Hudson has a new interview out. Here is a pertinent excerpt:
    Q: What is your view on the current weakness or strength of the US dollar, the Euro, the British Pound, Gold and Silver?
    MH: The dollar will remain in demand, thanks to its success in making the Eurozone dependent on it. The British pound has little means of support, and little reason for foreigners to invest in it. The euro is a junior satellite currency to the dollar.
    ​ ​Without a dollar or other currency to hold their monetary reserves in, governments will continue to increase the proportion held in gold, because it doesn’t have government liabilities attached to it – so U.S. officials can’t simply grab it, as they did with Russia’s foreign reserves. Eurozone countries cannot be trusted not to follow U.S. orders to grab foreign countries’ reserves, so it will be shunned.
    ​ ​As the euro’s exchange rate declines against the dollar, foreign investment will decline, because investors will not want to invest in (1) a shrinking market, and (2) companies that earn domestic euros that are worth fewer and fewer dollars or other hard currency for head offices.
    ​ ​Of course, gold will have to be kept at home, so that it can’t simply be grabbed, as the Bank of England grabbed Venezuela’s gold and gave it to the right-wing U.S. proxy. Germany would be wise to accelerate its airlift of its own gold supply from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank vaults in New York City.
    Q: What is your current analysis of the energy and financial crises in the world?
    MH: No real crisis as much as a slow crash. Rising prices paid for what America exports: oil, food and IT monopoly goods, with living costs for consumers rising faster than wages. So there will be a tightening squeeze or most families. The middle class will discover that it really is the wage-earning class after all, and will go deeper into debt – especially if it tries to protect itself by taking out a mortgage to buy a home.

    Michael Hudson gives an interview to a German magazine

    ​ ​The Petrodollar’s Long Goodbye​ , Vijay Prashad​
    As part of their concern about “currency power,” many countries in the Global South are eager to develop non-dollar trade and investment systems.
    ​ ​On Dec. 9, China’s President Xi Jinping met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss deepening ties between the Gulf countries and China.​..​
    ​..​In 1993, China became a net importer of oil, surpassing the United States as the largest importer of crude oil by 2017. Half of that oil comes from the Arabian Peninsula, and more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports go to China…
    ..At this first China-GCC summit, Xi urged the Gulf monarchs to “make full use of the Shanghai Petrol and Gas Exchange as a platform to conduct oil and gas sales using Chinese currency.” Earlier this year, Saudi Arabia suggested that it might accept Chinese yuan rather than U.S. dollars for the oil it sells to China.
    ​ ​While no formal announcement was made at the GCC summit nor in the joint statement issued by China and Saudi Arabia, indications abound that these two countries will move closer toward using the Chinese yuan to denominate their trade. However, they will do so slowly, as they both remain exposed to the U.S. economy.

    The Petrodollar’s Long Goodbye

    #123697
    John Day
    Participant

    Does Kissinger obliquely advocate for US regime-change to facilitate timely negotiations here?​
    ​ ​Urgently negotiating an end to hostilities in Ukraine would prevent another world war, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger argued in an essay published on Friday. The 99-year-old statesman noted that, in 1916, the US government had the chance to end the First World War through diplomacy, but missed it for reasons of domestic politics.​..
    ​ ​What’s fresh in Kissinger’s Spectator essay is his reasoning. He points to August 1916, at the height of the First World War, when the warring powers sought US mediation to end the unprecedented bloodshed. Though “a peace based on the modified status quo ante was within reach,” President Woodrow Wilson delayed the talks until after he could get re-elected in November. By then it was too late, and the war would go on for two more years, “irretrievably damaging Europe’s established equilibrium.”
    ​ ​Asked about Kissinger’s proposal, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “eager to give the article a thorough reading​​”​.
    ​https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/kissinger-outlines-ukraine-peace-proposal/

    ​ The “Biden” administration clearly cannot negotiate any reasonable settlement, having staked-out a rigid and indefensible political position.
    This administration would have to accept a public humiliation to ​enter any realistic negotiation.
    A replacement administration would not carry that baggage.
    ​ ​It is not yet time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan argued in an interview on Friday. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger – who held the same post in the early 1970s – has said talks should happen sooner rather than later.
    ​ ​“We don’t know where this is going to end up,” Sullivan said of the conflict, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment think tank in Washington. “What we do know is that it’s our job to continue to sustain our military support to Ukraine, so they are in the best possible position on the battlefield, so that if and when the diplomacy is ripe, they will be in the best possible position at the negotiating table.” “That moment is not right now,” he added.​..
    ​..There was no indication that 46-year-old Sullivan was aware of his predecessor’s essay in The Spectator, in which the 99-year-old Kissinger called for an armistice in Ukraine before the conflict spins out of control.
    https://www.azerbaycan24.com/en/time-for-ukraine-talks-not-right-now-white-house/

    ​ What parallel universe is this?
    ​ The White House believes Ukraine’s military could retake the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. However, officials say the offensive may cross Moscow’s “red lines” and prompt a nuclear strike.

    US Believes Ukraine Can Retake Crimea, But May Provoke Nuclear Escalation

    #123698
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Croatia had won. What a game!
    Most folks in Balkans rooting for them. Civil war forgotten.
    Which inspired stand-up comedian to come up with:
    Dead Serbian, Croat and Bosnian Muslim soldiers came outfrom the grave, shared a cigarettes and mused about current situation in the Balkans. People mingle again. Entertainment stars fill venues and stadiums or their songs are blasting in the coffee bars of former “enemy republics”, Tourists visiting as there is no tomorrow. Soldiers came to sad conclusion: “Somebody really fucked us up. Royally!” and went back to their graves.
    Hope that Argentina wins tomorrow. Messi deserves a trophy in his last game in the national dress.

    #123699
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Reflecting on a post some time ago (Robin),

    aren’t all the injected supposed to be dead within 3 – 5 years?

    #123700
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    John Day

    ‘Another factor in the management change will be the necessary decline of globalist interests, in favor of rebuilding industry and infrastructure within the United States, with American workers.’

    Do you not see the problem with this statement?

    For the past 150 years or more, Industry and infrastructure have been constructed and/or powered via fossil fuels, and geared to the consumption of fossil fuels.

    What is needed is abandonment of fossil-fuel-based thinking and adoption of sustainable thinking.

    I doubt that more than 0.1% of the US populace is prepared to make that transition, and further futile efforts will be made to attempt to sustain the unsustainable until the entire population reaches a medieval lifestyle -well the portion left that has not died of starvation or committed suicide via toxic jabs, ingestion of faux food or other means.

    It will start to get really ‘interesting’ when there are no replacement parts for electric grid components that break or get damaged in storms etc. That ‘experiment’ is being conducted in Ukraine as I write.

    Airstrip Five is headed along the same track as Airstrips One, Two, Three and Four, but with a much lower capacity to make anything industrially, practically everything industrial or technical being imported, as was the case 150 years ago, before it became Airstrip Five and was a source of natural materials for the factories of The Empire. Indeed, Airstrip Five gone so far down the path of high energy use coupled with de-industrialisation [in the sense of getting rid of factories] that it is no longer capable of producing leather or textiles beyond what a few artisans can manage. But there are still plenty of helicopters -one of the most inefficient forms of transport ever invented- in the skies at the moment, some of them essential for maintenance of the electric grid.

    There was a brief period when Airstrip Five as headed along the path of increased local production of practically everything. But the globalists put an end to that, commencing the mid-1980s.

    The ‘good news’ for the moment is that a combination of demand destruction and manipulation has resulted in international oil prices being depressed, allowing the madness of internal combustion dependency to continue at a higher pace than would be the case if oil prices were much higher.

    That could all change in a matter of weeks, or even days, of course.

    https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/46

    #123701
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Please define the “airstrip” (1 thru 5) allegory so that I can follow the conversation without quite so much guesswork.

    #123702
    citizenx
    Participant

    Thanks Germ ! Your reporting does make a difference and a positive impact.

    For those offended by truth and reality… (no words)

    Perhaps they just need to spend more time singing happy happy clap clap songs so as not to be offended- that their “own” family members truly don’t listen or give a flying fuck about their opinions.

    Joke of the year for me-

    fastest way to lose friends these days is to tell them the truth…

    #123703
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Anyone who has watched “The Godfather” knows the meaning of ” An offer he can’t refuse” . Fewer people have given much thought to what it means to make “An offer he can’t accept.”

    That’s the offer made when you want to force the other party to keep fighting, so that they can be destroyed without drawing down upon oneself the blame for preemptively attacking them.

    The West’s ridiculous stipulations for a peace agreement ( “You give up everything and get nothing in return, and THEN we’ll talk about you giving up even more stuff”) was made absurdly absurdly toxic and unacceptable to ENSURE that Russia would reject it with extreme prejudice, and continue winning the Ukraine War.

    During that time (during the inevitable crushing of Ukraine as a viable nation) the West will ramp up the rhetoric even further, doing it’s damnedest to frame Russia as a rapacious Asian horde descending upon Europe like the the Hun of ancient history. At some point near the end they will frame Russia by false-flag nuking Ukraine, blame it on Russia with the biggest propaganda blitz the world has ever seen, and preemptively launch a full scale preemptive nuclear strike on Russia from sea to shining sea.

    That’s the plan.

    #123704
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Afewknowthetruth

    While not address the climate stuff per se, I would comment about the self limiting nature of ‘advanced’ cultures exhausting their resource base.

    I highly recommend the book, Forests, In the Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

    .

    I recall a passage commenting on the entire Italian peninsula all the way down the spine of the Apennines in pre-history being one of the densest forested areas in Europe, denser than the Black Forests of the Germans. The Etruscan tribes dwelling in there were feared in their near endless dark forest citadels.

    The Romans managed to completely de-forest huge swaths of the Italian peninsula from top to bottom for their ‘civilization’ and Imperial War Machine, allowing massive, almost unimaginable amounts of rich dark topsoil to rinse into both the Aegean and Adriatic, lost forever, leaving behind large tracts of near barren land, barely capable of growing much besides olives and goats, much less trees. Hence the imperative to conquer other more fertile lands.

    So everyone oohs & ahs the technological bling of the Romans but forgets at all civilization have their base in land fertility and forests.

    The Chinese demographics are now tipping to more elderly than young. A financial ponzi is the only corrective measure to stall such a demographic imbalance or conquest beyond their borders. They have few energy resources for a billion plus souls, energy being the Master Resource. If you sealed them into the boundaries of China proper today, they would collapse in decades for lack of food and energy.

    They like the Romans, have to expand beyond their literal borders to survive as a ‘civilization’. They must tap into Africa, other parts of the Global South, etc, to survive. Like a shark, they have to always keep moving forward or perish.

    In the history of Homo sapian sapian, the ‘wise, wise’ ape, it had to name itself ‘wise’ twice, because of it’s insecurity and arrogance about it’s place in the cosmos. Very, very little humility.

    Takes hundreds of millions of people to produce one Picasso every so often, not even every generation.

    Not much of a batting average.

    That’s a reason why ‘civilizations’ are inherently self limiting.

    Takes a long, long time to produce a culture, progressing one funeral at a time as they say, that can even make a fine pocket watch much less a spaceship.

    Only takes a moment for a monkey to come along and use that fine time piece to crack open walnuts on the bricks in the town square.

    Hey, maybe a Snub Nosed Monkey could do it!

    All dressed up and nowhere to go.

    .

    #123705
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    For those who missed it first time round:

    Airstrip One: Britain

    Airstrip Two: The US

    Airstrip Three: Canada

    Airstrip Four: Australia

    Airstrip Five: Aotearoa (NZ)

    Apologies to Eric Blair. Or, in fact, many thanks to Eric Blair (George Orwell)

    Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

    #123706
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @Afewknowthetruth

    Thankee for the list & it’s a good thing because my guess work was off by 60% (I had two out of 5). It was clear you were speaking about the Commonwealth and/or 5 Eyes (the US has always only been a big colony with privileges) but I couldn’t suss out who was which.

    #123707
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Oroboros

    No argument with anything you say.

    About 15 years ago I was introduced to the writings and teachings of Native American -a poor term, maybe descendent of original settlers is better- Derrick Jensen.

    “Forrest proceed us, deserts follow us.”

    ‘The Culture of Make Believe.’

    ‘End Game.’

    Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

    Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

    Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

    Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

    Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

    Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

    Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

    Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

    Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

    Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

    Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

    Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.

    Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

    Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of llusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

    Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

    Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

    Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

    Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

    Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

    Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

    Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

    Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

    Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

    Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

    Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.

    .https://derrickjensen.org/endgame/premises/

    Absorbing what Derrick Jensen had written helped me transition from attempting to make futile bargains with reality to try to prolong unsustainable living arrangements to recognising exactly where civilisation is headed.

    Needless to say, I was vilified for speaking such unspeakable truths. I still am vilified on occasions, but much less so now that all the fake systems imposed on us by the money-lender totalitarian fascist sociopaths/psychopaths are unravelling.

    Linnaeus was a product of the arrogant culture he was born into.

    We now know that a better name for our species is homo stultus stultus

    #123708
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Denninger explaining how we are surrounded by liars and idjuts, including the green loonies who despite repeatedly declaring their ignorance of how the world works, keep on raising themselves up as all-knowing prophets of doom … The Failure In Basic Education.

    #123709
    zerosum
    Participant

    Re-modification of Premise Twenty:
    The web created more than one communication channel.
    That is how we can catch the manipulators lying to us.
    Way to go TAE.

    #123710
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Fermi’s paradox, corroborated by recent terrestrial history, implies that the apparent absence of radio signals from Milky Way planets and beyond may be attributed to an inherently self-destructive nature of civilizations”

    What is this? Do people always think this shallow and selfish? So small and narrow? Here, let me rephrase it for you: “the apparent absence of Mayan knotted-rope language from the City of Ur is attributed to the self-destructive nature of Zen monks in Shunkoin Temple.”

    A) Only primitives of a very specific type would or ever have used “Radio”. Maybe, as we have, for only 50 years before they can use something actual, smart, and useful. Then they leave radio behind because, um, maybe it only moves at the speed of light, therefore it would take 100,000 years to hold a conversation?

    B) What Milky Way planets? What civilizations? Ones with gas-borne sea creatures in the clouds of a dim planet like Uranus? Big radio users, they. One of conscious crystal stone formations that cover the planet who are all-one therefore no need for outside communication?

    C) They’ve been watching too much Star Trek, where all aliens are human, all on Gravity = 1 planets, who all speak English. And have hot boobs.

    D) All these very, very different planets, have very, very different creatures with very very different communication, and unimaginable languages with unimaginable consciousnesses. We’re probably standing on one now and STILL don’t recognize it’s talking. In fact, I’m sure of it. https://www.ted.com/talks/camille_defrenne_and_suzanne_simard_the_secret_language_of_trees It’s been there the whole time, they TOLD you the language, and Science STILL says it doesn’t exist. Science does this about 10x an hour. I remember they spent 30 years not cracking the Mayan tablets until they realized the people IN CAMP were SPEAKING MAYAN. …But they were poor, stupid servants, you see. Not to sully themselves with. Science is so smart it does this all day, every day, all the days of its life.

    E) Leaving all that aside, there is a much better theory that as Viking II leaves the solar system, it appears unable to hear, move, no one is really certain. It appears to be reaching a sort of thick increasing static, electromagnetism? That seems to get “denser”? So perhaps for reasons we don’t understand each solar system may be surrounded with…something…like an egg, separated, divided, perhaps impenetrable. It may not allow matter through, or not except under unusual conditions. Perhaps such communications are…not so simple…if surrounded by a…”field” of this type? But we already know it would take 10,000 lifetimes to travel there by the normal rules. So no one is using the “Normal” rules.

    F) “Normal” according to the pin-headed cave men hominoids drunk on violence and hedonism? Who still fly using propeller planes? THIS is the intelligence by which WE presume to know EVERY or most life in our part of the galaxy use only radio to talkie-talkie?

    I can’t imagine anything more dumb. When we have evidence of easy distanceless telepathy right here. We’ve already just invented quantum, instant communication. So why would we use papyrus, cuneiform, and knot-writing again?

    And these are the smart people.

    Anyway, the reason they say this irrational rot? Booor—ing! Same old same old: Human bad. Kill them all! That’s the ticket. We need to kill them to kill them. I mean save them. Save them BY killing them. It’s inevitable, Mr. Anderson.

    And then, apply this non-fact, unknown, unproven non-theory, of non-aliens, where we prove a negative, to today, and our actions, in an attempt to encourage us to die, and make choices that encourage us to die. Sciency science, just as smart as the radio theory, telling us the hydrocarbon theory is the only power in the universe. Violence is the only side of humanity, although both are clearly and easily false.

    Did Rome, 4f warmer than now, use hydrocarbons? Did the High bronze age, making antikytherea machines and steam robots for fun use crude oil? Does our future world use electricity and more? Uh, yeah.

    “The inevitable consequence is a shift”

    Oh no Dr. Evil! It is our inevitable end! Sharks with lasers on their heads! Humans who walked across the Bering Strait, survived 5 Ice Ages, a catastrophic flood that wiped out everything below 10,000ft, and God knows what else, won’t survive a 3f rise in temperature! Even though they ALREADY did. It’s all over now!

    Come. On. What POSSIBLE non-sciency non-logical nonsense is this?

    Why would I waste myself on Science details when even the 10,000 foot logic is flawed? Our Warming is ON SCHEDULE. Same as always. But it’s also NOT on schedule, because we caused it? And we know that this is in our out of normal range how? Using the same super-logic we used that claims radio is the smartest thing in the Universe and all the cool civilizations are using it?

    How about this: We’ve survived everything for 100,000 years. We’re not going to go down now. Civilizations come and go, why would I G.A.F.? Out of the Olmecs come the Toltecs. Out of the Toltecs come the Aztecs. Out of the Aztecs come the Anasazi. Out of the Anasazi come the Navajo. Out of the Navajo come kids of today, Wind-talking on their iPhones. What does “Collapse” mean?

    Dude: it means the BAD GUYS FAIL. ROME is the bad guy. El Mirador is the bad guy. The GOOD guys are when the Center, the King, Caligula, old Queen Lizzie DIES, and gives the power back to the PEOPLE. The People who wander off into the jungle to live a peaceful, unoppressed life for a change.

    These scientists, historians? They WORSHIP power. Authority. Because they are bookworms and fools. So they think the battered, barely functioning, discourteous, ignoramuses on the Mayflower were “Civilized”, while the 5,000 year cultures they met are un-Civilized. Exclusively because they live in bark huts instead of wearing digital watches. …And they call that distinction “smart”. Ulysses, showing 10,000 year courtesy to a pig herder is “Savage” but Stalin killing 100 million is “Civilized.” Sure. Got it.

    Like using “Radio” OMG, how DUMB can you be? The Mound Builders LEFT Aztec-land. As did the Mayans. They LEFT the slavery, power, oppression that is the le plus ESSENCE of civilization: centralization, and wandered back into the woods to live like MEN. Not like savages. Free men, no longer slaves. Civilization IS slavery, by definition.

    But Scientists and historians aren’t men but savages and they can’t realize that. So: Emperor Caligula for you? Or a pleasant thatched roundhouse by the lake, your choice. QE II, or we go back to living modestly in cabins, fetching firewood by Algonquin Park rather than scratching a living building silicon chips for her majesty’s missiles while our kids are tortured and snatched.

    The “COLLAPSE” Jared talks about is the GOOD thing, not the Bad thing. It ENDS the violence, it doesn’t begin it.

    When you’re fighting “collapse’ as I’ve said, you’re really fighting yourself. You are fighting FOR lifeless, terrifying concrete cities, fighting FOR cars. Fighting FOR digital watches and clicky-boxes. Walk away from the cities, let the cars go. Let it “Collapse”, as “IT” is the terrifying, heartless, soulless, “technoverse”, the enemy of man. Grow your garden, don’t fight for the continuation of the system that is trying to outlaw it.

    “Collapse” takes care of all that. Man carries on, unharmed, or no more harmed than usual, because — spoiler — we all die in the end. But the evil, the “Plans” of the concentrated central power, all disperse and vanish like vapor. Like Sauron. Their plans, their evil, their action, and their energy use, all fade away. Man remains.

    So be like the Navajo: walk away. Be like the Maori: sail away. Be like Elsa: Let it Go.

    IF ONLY we could have that 30 foot sea level rise in 10 years they promise, we’d all be saved. But we haven’t for the last 40 years and we won’t be that lucky now either. Like men with the brains of the mentally-retarded, we’ll just move back from the shore a few feet and build again for another thousand years.

    …Sorry AFKTT, I didn’t know that was you who posted this. If I had, I would have constructed it in a more judicious and reserved manner. Look: you’re old, apparently. There’s nothing to worry about. Life will go on, human and otherwise, never like yesterday, never as planned. It just keeps rolling forward and transforming in The Big Story. The only real worry isn’t death, but if you believe in reincarnation and have to come back some day.

    Keep prayin’ for the sea level rise. It makes me happy to think of.

    #123711
    zerosum
    Participant

    Eat cake your heart out

    French Social Media Erupts as Store Clerk on Avenue Montaigne Reports Zelenskyy’s Wife Having €40,000 Christmas Shopping Spree in Paris

    French Social Media Erupts as Store Clerk on Avenue Montaigne Reports Zelenskyy’s Wife Having €40,000 Christmas Shopping Spree in Paris
    December 14, 2022 | sundance | 256 Comments
    Olena Zelenska, wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, traveled to Paris France for a three-day visit December 12-14. As reported by Le Monde, “Members of the Ukrainian government will also come, including Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, and several ministers in charge of reconstruction, including Yulia Svyrydenko (economy), Oleksandr Kubrakov (infrastructure) and German Galushchenko (energy).”

    However, social media has erupted today after a “reliable store clerk” working on the ritzy Avenue Montaigne, has reported that Olena Zelenska went on a Christmas shopping spree spending €40,000 euros in an hour. (citation) Previously President Zelenskyy’s wife was received by French first lady Bridget Macron.

    #123712
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Michael Reid:
    “Reflecting on a post some time ago (Robin), aren’t all the injected supposed to be dead within 3 – 5 years?“
    Not all the vaxxed are equally vaxxed; therefore, not all vaxxed are equally fucked. I recently shared here an article by a well-known anti-vaxxer who had tests run on a number of vax samples from different sources. Some of them had no mRna. Or graphene oxide (iirc). There was major inconsistency in the ingredients, something that was in the talkstream here about a year ago.
    It’s hit-or-miss.
    Meanwhile, the greater danger is VAIDS, which has the potential to afflict the unvaxxed as well as the vaxxed over time.
    ***
    Compassion is a funny thing. It can really piss people off when they feel that their level of compassion has been deemed insufficient. Generally, we respond with little or no compassion to those who, we feel, have slighted our concern for our fellow human beings. In fact, we tend to respond hostilely.
    I do appreciate that Germ cleared up one issue: as I and others suspected, TV ASVF is anything but an expression of concern for the fate of the vaxxed. It’s a denunciation.
    Compassion is a funny thing. Etymologically, it means “suffer with”. Well, we suffer with the vaxxed one way or another: through feelings of empathy, through the many hardships imposed upon us by the vakzinazion programs (pogroms), through the specter of VAIDS breeding ever more infectious and virulent pathogens.
    We’re all pretty fucked in this thing. Some more than the others. Compassion is a merciless bitch. Feeling for others’ pain literally hurts. But it’s good soul medicine. Compassion for others breeds compassion for oneself, and boy, do we need compassion for ourselves, and man, will we need even more compassion as things get worse.
    Will my son succumb to vaccine side effects? Maybe so. I hope not, but what good is hope if TVASVF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Will my niece, her hubs, and 3 kids under 5 succumb to the vakzine and it’s myriad direct and indirect side effects? Who knows? I do know that they are currently True Believers in the oaficial covid narrative. (I no longer say covidiocy, having learned that it long ago was popularized by the mainstream as a slur against anti-vaxxers/lockdowns/etc.)

    I know a person on this forum, someone who was doing serious research about the dangers of the vax long before Germ arrived posting links about covid. This person posted a handy factsheet for rebutting vaxxers and hopefully changing their minds. This person’s spouse is a regional bigshot with a brand name USA medical agency acronym. Said spouse is a True Believer both professionally and privately. It has placed great strain on their marriage. One assumes that said spouse is fully vakzinated, and therefore our fellow TAE colleague worries, one assumes, if said spouse’s vakzinazion will reduce the quality of their marriage even further by dying on our colleague.
    If I heard in TVASVF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tones of mourning for the many vaxxed lives already or yet to be ruined, I’d understand the constant refrain to the effect “They’re all gonna die!” It would serve some positive purpose. But what I hear is “They’re all gonna die and they deserve it!”

    As if people deserve to be lied to their death by government agencies they were taught from the cradle to believe in. As if people deserve to suffer and die, period. I predict there will come a time when we will feel a need for much forgiveness from ourselves and our fellows. But it will be that much harder if we’ve habituated ourselves to perpetual blame’n’shame, have given ourselves over to a superficially adult version of ‘It’s not my FAULT!/They started it!”
    TVASVF!!!! is like whipping a dying horse. It can’t get up and work; it can only suffer more. As for the vaxxed as already dead horses, well, doh. We kinda already knew that dying is generally as fucked as it gets.

    ***

    afktt: ad hominems do get old, but many people are so invested in Being Right at All Costs (except their own) that it remains as infectious as ever. fwiw, I see your dedication to the facts and how your detractors show little interest in them. Whether this means that global climate disruption is real or not is not the point. We arrive at the truth not by being right, but by diligently searching for it and admitting when we’re wrong.

    Such a thing is honor, and honor, I have concluded, is as rare as it is superficially idealized by the majority.

    ***

    Nifty info on one of the many versions of Father Xmas

    ***

    Ring-a-ring-a-rosies
    A pocket full of posies
    A tissue, a tissue
    We all fall down
    The king has sent his daughter
    To fetch a pail of water
    A tissue, a tissue
    We all fall down
    The robin on the steeple
    Is singing to the people
    A tissue, a tissue
    We all fall down
    The wedding bells are ringing
    The boys and girls are singing
    A tissue, a tissue
    We all fall down

    Huh. I get my name in a children’s death song. Reminds me of how sad and weird it was to hear my 4th grade daughter and her schoolmates singing REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).

    ***

    Up to bed you go with no supper but with endless Xmas music!

    #123713
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Summer will return, we believe:

    null

    #123714
    TAE Summary
    Participant

    * The Daily Covid
    – The vaxxed blood supply : transfusion = transfection
    – People who drink gasoline and smoke are 250163% more likely to spontaneously combust
    – There are too many people on soccer fields; We need to reduce it from 22 to 10 or fewer by 2030 by any means necessary if soccer is to survive
    – All cause mortality is up but all cause immortality remains disturbingly low
    – What we know of Ivermectin: Designed to combat parasites it doesn’t seem to be working
    – When natural immunity is despised only the despised will have natural immunity
    – Covid response team leader dead at 35; FTV

    * Old is the New New
    – Orthodoxy is the new heresy
    – Computer neural nets match patterns better than human neurons; Only the programmers and the plumbers will still have jobs
    – Thucydides: The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must
    Capitalism: The strong charge what the market will bear, the weak bear what the market will charge
    – The best way to reduce your carbon footprint is to walk barefoot
    – The West are terrorists and can’t negotiated with
    – The future is a murky messy iffy mess of probabilities; Tomorrow never comes; I must kill my enemy today or they will live forever
    – Teaching is impossible. All you can do is hit someone with a factual 2X4 and steal their car keys before they come to
    – Q: Do you promise to tell lies, complete lies and nothing but lies?
    A: I do.
    – SBF owned the grenade but sold the pin to Zhao
    – Politicians and diapers need to be changed often and for the same reason – Mark Twain

    * From Wikipedia
    Rome contrived a justification to declare war on Carthage again in 149 BC, starting the Third Punic War. This conflict was fought entirely on Carthage’s territories in what is now Tunisia. In 146 BC the Romans stormed the city of Carthage, sacked it, slaughtered most of its population and completely demolished it. The previously Carthaginian territories were taken over as the Roman province of Africa. The ruins of the city lie 10 miles east of modern Tunis on the North African coast.

    #123715
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    bosco

    Yes, prove me wrong using properly collected data and proper analysis of data. I’d like nothing more than to be proven wrong with respect to a plethora of matters.

    But don’t just say I’m wrong (not you, of course, bosco, but the knee-jerk artists who know all the answers before even looking at any evidence or doing any analysis).

    And there was silence.

    While I’m here (alternating with garden work), I’d better get this clarified:

    TVASF

    The Vaxxed Are So Fucked?

    Or does it have some other meaning I missed along the way?

    An internet search revealed nothing. Not even cheap flights to The Vaxxed Are Fucked or stores offering discounts on The Vaxxed Are So Fucked.

    Gardening: a refuge in a world gone mad, or deliberately driven mad. Some of my sweetcorn plants are now nearly as high as an elephant’s eye, and still growing!

    .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5APc0z49wg

    #123716
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    #123717
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @Noirette

    You wrote: “…subsiduary aim of the Plandemic is to eliminate medical doctors as independent agents.”

    Of Noirette is right except about one part “…subsiduary aim of the Plandemic”.

    Alain Enthoven can verify the plan to reduce or “eliminate medical doctors as independent agents” has been proceeding apace since the 1960s as he authored The Plan. Certainly Alain wrote quite a few plans alongside such paranoid schizophrenic heavyweights such as John Nash at Stanford, SecDef and RAND corp.

    Enthoven presented his white paper addressing the physician autonomy problem at none other than the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-60s.

    “Enthoven [has] argued that integrated delivery systems — networks of health care organizations under a parent holding company that provide a continuum of health care services — align incentives and resources better than most healthcare delivery systems, leading to improved medical care quality while controlling costs”

    “If this were true than the doctors although they believed they were doing their public duty and was best for the patient, were in reality violet agents of oppression. I think it’s very important, that a doctor remember his duty, to give the patient what is best for them in their long-term interest, which isn’t always with the patient asked for”

    Game Theory figured prominently amongst these nitwits

    “At the heart of game theory was a dark vision of human beings who are driven only by self interest, constantly distrustful of those around them. There was a mathematician at the RAND Corp. who would take this dark vision further…[John Nash]

    Of course they missed the forest for the trees

    “When the prisoners dilemma game was tested on the secretaries of the RAND Corporation, none of them play the rational strategy. Instead of betray each other they always trust each other, and decided to cooperate. And what no one realized was John Nash himself was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. He had delusions in which you believe that those around him who wore red ties were communist spies, and that he was part of the secret organization that could save the world”

    As far as AI remains a pipedream until the data collector becomes a skilled diagnostician and capable of even rudimentary physical exam skills.
    And anyhow, “AI” whatever that term means to a reader hasn’t yet achieved accuracy in the Coding realm. None of these advances are meant to accessible or affordable to the rank and file or the poor, so much for the suffering of the people.

    #123718
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    AFAIK – I second all that Dr. D says about “collapse’” (or should we say “COLLAPSE”?). And about your climate fetish, since all of your premises are wrong, you are asking the wrong questions, getting the wrong answers, and reaching the wrong conclusions. Not only the premises, but the methodology, as well.
    Whoops! But it’s “reasonable.” Good luck with that…

    #123719
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    Oh, and your non-climate premises all merit consideration. Whence the blindness about the climate folly?

    #123753
    Noirette
    Participant

    Dr Rich, because I believe the Plandemic had, has, more overarching (sp) aims, but this thread is dead…. Yes, as you write, “AI” has severe limitations..

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