Dec 192022
 
 December 19, 2022  Posted by at 9:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Pablo Picasso Portrait de femme (Dora Maar) 1943

 

One Year Ago, Russia Gave The West A Last Chance (Lukyanov)
A Lexicon for Disaster (Scott Ritter)
EU Sued Over Anti-Russia Sanctions (RT)
Lawyer Claims Eva Kaili Followed EU Parliament Chief’s Orders In Qatar (Eur.)
Will the Fallout from “Qatargate” Splatter the European Commission? (NC)
Biden’s Latest JFK Document Dump Is A JOKE (OffG)
Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Blood Clotting: FDA (ET)
FDA Uncovers Yet Another Dangerous Side Effect of the Covid-19 ‘Vaccines’ (KB)
TWITTER FILES Supplemental (Taibbi)
Musk Asks Twitter If He Should Step Down (ZH)
Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies (ET)
Democratic Members Warn Facebook Not to “Backslide” on Censorship (Turley)
Democrats Like Adam Schiff Are Scrambling To Save Censorship (Devine)
Former FBI Agent Calls Assertion Oath Keepers are Anti-Government ‘Absurd’ (ET)
US Doublespeak Will Not Stop Gold’s Imminent Surge (Von Greyerz)

 

 

 

 

BRICS

 

 

 

 

Child vaccine

 

 

Red Balloon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1604437989865971712

 

 

 

 

 

 

“NATO and the Americans categorically refused to discuss the main political issue: a formal rejection of NATO expansion.”

One Year Ago, Russia Gave The West A Last Chance (Lukyanov)

It’s been a year since a Russian document outlining proposals (or demands, if you prefer) for long-term guarantees on European security was delivered to NATO and the US. This was the starting point of the major politico-military crisis that defines the global situation today. Was the Russian ultimatum (and that is how it was formulated) designed to be rejected, or did it envisage a path to negotiations? President Vladimir Putin probably reasoned along the following lines: after so many years of ignoring our wishes and convictions, let’s give it one last chance. Let’s put forward the maximum set of demands, everything that has been said before, but outline them in one place and in a concentrated form, and see what happens.

If they realize that this time that it’s extremely serious, and with that in mind, decide on a real discussion, we are ready. However, if they start to waste time again, then that’s it. Let’s cut to the chase. If the response from the West was not satisfactory, the military operation in Ukraine would be the next step. There was apparently no chance of avoiding it by then. After all, the logic behind the need for the offensive was outlined in Putin’s big article in the summer of 2021. That is, the security demands were made when the internal readiness for action was already in place. The scale of the consequences leads many to return to the question: Was what happened inevitable? The argument that “we had no choice,” often heard at the highest level in Moscow, is problematic because it effectively means that Russia’s previous policies were wrong. A policy which leads to no alternative solution, i.e. forcing one to act in a certain way and no other way, cannot be considered successful.

So an analysis of the long period since the early 2000s will at some point be an important lesson for the future. Was there an urgent need to make demands and initiate the military operation at that point in time? Based on what we know now (which is probably not everything), there was room for maneuver and an opportunity to prepare better. Strategically, a conflict over Ukraine was probably inevitable, but the specific circumstances and timetable could have been different. Is anyone in the West kicking themselves right now? An ultimatum can only be accepted by great powers, and even more so by superpowers, as a result of a military defeat. So there was, I think, no chance of the demands being accepted. I have to say that the consultations that took place in January 2022 showed that the US was ready for some concessions on specific issues of military security.

To a greater extent than they had indicated before the demands were made. However, this amounted to very little relative to the overall picture. Most importantly, NATO and the Americans categorically refused to discuss the main political issue: a formal rejection of NATO expansion. For them, this is unacceptable because the military bloc’s enlargement is the basis of the entire international security philosophy as it has been understood in the West since the end of the Cold War. But even beyond this, in the West there is a complete absence (or perhaps a disappearance) of reflection on the history behind current events.

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Arms treaties and diplomacy have been abandoned. They’re bad for business.

A Lexicon for Disaster (Scott Ritter)

With no common language, there can be no common vision, no common purpose. Russia continues to seek arms control agreements which serve to restrict the arsenals of the involved parties to prevent dangerous escalatory actions while imposing a modicum of predictable stability on relations. The U.S. seeks only unilateral advantage. Until this is changed, there can be no meaningful arms control interaction between the U.S. and Russia. Not only will the New START treaty expire in February 2026, but it is also unlikely the major verification component of the treaty — on site inspections — will be revived between now and then. Moreover, it is impossible to see how a new arms control agreement to replace the expired New START treaty could be negotiated, ratified, and implemented in the short time remaining to do so.


There is no trust between Russia and the U.S. when it comes to arms control. With no treaties, there is no verification of reality. Both the U.S. and Russian arsenals will become untethered from treaty-based constraint, leading to a new arms race for which there can be only one finishing line — total nuclear war. There is a long list of things that must happen if meaningful arms control is ever to resume its place in the diplomatic arsenals of either the U.S. or Russia. Before either side can resume talking to one another, however, they must first re-learn the common language of disarmament. Because the current semantics of arms control is little more than a lexicon for disaster.

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62 lawsuits. So far.

EU Sued Over Anti-Russia Sanctions (RT)

Dozens of Russians and Belarusians have filed lawsuits at the EU Court of Justice, to challenge their inclusion on the sanctions list, the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag reported on Saturday. The Luxembourg-based court has reportedly received claims from one company and 61 individuals from Russia and Belarus, placed on the EU blacklist over their alleged support for Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. The business figures are seeking to challenge what they view as a violation of their rights, and the freeze of their assets by EU authorities. According to the media report, the plaintiffs in Luxembourg include Russian billionaire and former owner of the English football club Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, ESN Group owner Grigory Berezkin, and Gennady Timchenko, who owns Volga Group, a Russia-based company with interests in energy, transportation and construction.


Alfa Group co-founder Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov, the owner Russia’s largest iron ore producer, are also among those suing. The EU has adopted nine rounds of anti-Russia sanctions since February 24, when Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine. Aside from business people, the penalties include measures against Russian journalists and companies. On Friday, the EU blacklisted 141 Russian individuals and 49 legal entities, including ministers, governors, judges, parliament members, singers and presenters, as well as five political parties. The latest measures also deprived four more Russian media outlets of their broadcasting licenses in the EU, introduced a number of export bans, and extended restrictions on three more banks. Export restrictions were extended to 168 additional Russian entities closely linked to the Russian military-industrial complex, bringing the total number of sanctioned companies to 410.

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Could be an interesting court case. Note Borrell’s involvement.

Lawyer Claims Eva Kaili Followed EU Parliament Chief’s Orders In Qatar (Eur.)

Qatar had no need to bribe socialist MEP Eva Kaili as the latter was implementing a wider EU plan and was getting orders from EU Parliament President Roberta Metsola, Kaili’s lawyer Michalis Dimitrakopoulos alleged on Tuesday. Metsola’s office told EURACTIV that the president gave instructions on how to represent the institution’s position and “nothing else”. Last Friday, Greek MEP Eva Kaili, her partner Francesco Giorgi, and ex-MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri, president of the NGO Fight Against Impunity, were arrested by the Belgian police on suspicion of corruption. On a political level, with an overwhelming majority, the EU House sacked her yesterday from the vice presidency.

In an almost unanimous vote, EU lawmakers removed Eva Kaili as vice president of the European Parliament on Tuesday (13 December), following the so-called Qatargate, one of the biggest corruption scandals in the EU’s history. On Thursday, Belgian courts will decide whether she will remain in jail until the adjudication of the case. In an interview with Greek MEGA TV channel, Dimitrakopoulos said Kaili has nothing to do with bribery from Qatar. “What the public opinion needs to know is that Qatar did not need to bribe Ms Kaili because she went to Qatar as a representative of the European Parliament, the speeches, the interviews she gave were after the agreement and order of the President Roberta Metsola,” Dimitrakopoulos said.

He added that documents prove this and explained that Kaili did not take any initiative or have an agenda. “Ms Metsola sent her to Qatar, what she was going to say had Ms Metsola’s approval […] Ms Metsola had also sent EU official Mr Roberto Bendini with her to watch all of Ms Kaili’s meetings”, he explained. “I am telling you the words of Ms Kaili, she was carrying out a plan that had started in 2019, High Representative Josep Borrell and Ylva Johansson [Commissioner for Home Affairs] had decided at the Commission level, to cooperate with Qatar, Kuwait and Oman,” the lawyer added.

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“..he resisted those calls and in 2020 was bumped up to the European Commission, as so often happens with scandal-tarnished domestic politicians in the EU…”

Will the Fallout from “Qatargate” Splatter the European Commission? (NC)

For the moment, it is far from clear just how far this burgeoning scandal will reach. One thing that is clear is that the reputational damage will be large and lasting. The European Union’s ability to lecture the misbehaving governments of Member States and third-party countries on how to govern will be further diminished. As Hungary’s Victor Orban said in a video uploaded to his Facebook page, “It is time that we drain the swamp here in Brussels.” And he is right. EU institutions need to get their house in order once and for all, and fast. And that is unlikely to happen. The EU ombudsman Emily O’Reilly said this week that Von der Leyen’s proposed plan for a new ethics body is likely to end up as “something with no teeth, something that will possibly sit there passively, wait for complaints to come in.”

What the body really needs, O’Reilly said, is investigatory and sanctions powers. But that might actually threaten to derail the gravy train Brussels has become. And the problem is not just illegal cash payments stuffed away in paper bags and briefcases; it is the vast lobbying apparatus that has built up in Brussels, which is now the second largest lobbying capital in the world after Washington. As in Washington, lobbying reaches into just about every aspect of governance. In its 2015 report, CEO reported that lobbyists representing businesses and trade associations made up 75% of all high-level Commission lobby meetings and more than 80% in certain areas such as financial regulation or the internal market. The inevitable result, as in Washington, is that policies are made almost exclusively in the service of vested corporate interests.

Sometimes corporate lobbies even draft the EU’s legislation. This is the business model of modern governance. Lastly, if Borrell is indeed caught up in this burgeoning scandal and, by some miracle, loses his job, it would be no great loss to the EU’s 450 million citizens. He is the least diplomatic of diplomats. Just about every time he speaks, whether on the wonders of European colonialism or the vast untamed jungle that lies beyond Europe’s borders, damage is inflicted on the EU’s relations with some other part of the world. Since long before the Ukraine conflict he has played a leading role in escalating tensions with Russia, the EU’s biggest neighbor and energy supplier. He is also no stranger to scandal, having been convicted, in 2018, of insider trading in Spain. That resulted in him being placed on the Spanish market regulator’s blacklist. The ensuing scandal triggered calls for his resignation as Spain’s then-Foreign Minister. But he resisted those calls and in 2020 was bumped up to the European Commission, as so often happens with scandal-tarnished domestic politicians in the EU.

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“..two days later and on a complete whim, he decided to sneak back into the police station carrying a gun and shoot a man he had never met for no reason at all..”

Biden’s Latest JFK Document Dump Is A JOKE (OffG)

Waiting for a government – any government – to release their “secret” files is a waste of your time, and reading anything they eventually publish is doubly so. If you didn’t learn that from the nothing-burger that was the 28 pages on 9/11, or the pathetic exercise in revisionism that made up the Afghanistan Papers…you should definitely have learned it today. Yes, Joe Biden’s administration has just released their promised “secret” JFK papers. Turns out that Oswald acted alone. I know, I was shocked too. Further, the release dials back on the (very slight) anti-Russia messaging of last year’s release. In December 2021, the previous batch of “secret” files revealed Oswald met with a KGB agent in the days running up to the assassination.

The latest batch reassures us that Oswald never worked for the KGB, and that the Russians thought he was “too crazy” to recruit. One gets the impression that has as much to do with managing propaganda positioning over the war in Ukraine as anything else. Either way, its a ridiculously transparent attempt to reinforce the “lone wolf” lie. “He was too crazy and unstable even for the Russians!” Laughable. Further, one particular “secret” memo claims… the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner”. Yes, before Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald they were apparently “not connected in any manner”. He had never met Oswald before the assassination, and barely had any idea who he was when he shot him on November 24th.

This means the current “official story” is that Ruby randomly chose to attend the press conference where Oswald spoke on the evening of November 22nd, despite not being a member of the press. During this press conference, Ruby correctly pointed out Oswald had joined the “fair play for Cuba committee” (presumably an inspired guess, seeing as they did not know one another). Then, two days later and on a complete whim, he decided to sneak back into the police station carrying a gun and shoot a man he had never met for no reason at all, in the parking lot of a police station, while surrounded by police officers. That’s what these “secret files” tell us…the same ridiculous story as the very unsecret Warren Commission.

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While we have been talking about bloodclots fior at least two years, the FDA only just discovered them. But: “..still under investigation and require more robust study.”

This costs lives.

Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Linked to Blood Clotting: FDA (ET)

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has been linked to blood clotting in older individuals, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA researchers, crunching data from a database of elderly persons in the United States, found that pulmonary embolism—blood clotting in the lungs—met the initial threshold for a statistical signal and continued meeting the criteria after a more in-depth evaluation. Three other outcomes of interest—a lack of oxygen to the heart, a blood platelet disorder called immune thrombocytopenia, and another type of clotting called intravascular coagulation—initially raised red flags, researchers said. More in-depth evaluations, such as comparisons with populations who received influenza vaccines, showed those three as no longer meeting the statistical threshold for a signal.


Researchers looked at data covering 17.4 million elderly Americans who received a total of 34.6 million vaccine doses between Dec. 10, 2020, and Jan. 16, 2022. The study was published by the journal Vaccine on Dec. 1. The FDA said it was not taking any action on the results because they do not prove the vaccines cause any of the four outcomes, and because the findings “are still under investigation and require more robust study.” Dr. Peter McCullough, chief medical adviser for the Truth for Health Foundation, told The Epoch Times via email that the new paper “corroborates the concerns of doctors that the large uptick in blood clots, progression of atherosclerotic heart disease, and blood disorders is independently associated with COVID-19 vaccination.”

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“The FDA said it was not taking any action based on the study because the findings do not prove the vaccines cause any of the four outcomes.”

FDA Uncovers Yet Another Dangerous Side Effect of the Covid-19 ‘Vaccines’ (KB)

A recent study drawing on over thirty million datapoints from the the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data system shows a heightened risk of pulmonary embolism, as well as the known elevated risk for myocarditis. “We evaluated 14 outcomes of interest following COVID-19 vaccination using the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) data covering 30,712,101 elderly persons,” the international study in the journal Elsevier stated. “The CMS data from December 11, 2020 through Jan 15, 2022 included 17,411,342 COVID-19 vaccinees who received a total of 34,639,937 doses. We conducted weekly sequential testing and generated rate ratios (RR) of observed outcome rates compared to historical (or expected) rates prior to COVID-19 vaccination.”

The findings supply yet more evidence that the Covid mRNA shots should not be recommended without the standard risks of serious side effects. “Four outcomes met the threshold for a statistical signal following BNT162b2 vaccination including pulmonary embolism (PE; RR = 1.54), acute myocardial infarction (AMI; RR = 1.42), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC; RR = 1.91), and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP; RR = 1.44),” the study found. The term RR [Risk Ratio] is an expression of the relative risk of the pharmaceutical product versus a placebo. An RR of 1.5 represents a 50% heightened risk for the given side effect.

The study couches the findings in the typical manner: Claiming that the benefits of the ‘vaccines’ outweigh the ‘risks.’ However, that would only be clearly the case if a patient did not have natural antibodies and was at increased due to risk factors such as age, obesity, or immunocompromisation. Seroprevalence data show that nearly every American in the United States has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2. The FDA said it was not taking any action based on the study because the findings do not prove the vaccines cause any of the four outcomes. The FDA claimed the findings “are still under investigation and require more robust study.”

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Musk has shaken the tree pretty hard. It’s now up to the rest of us.

TWITTER FILES Supplemental (Taibbi)

On Friday, I posted a series of exchanges between Twitter and the FBI. One that required a bit too much explaining was left out. But it’s an important document, because it clearly demonstrates that Twitter will not only take requests from the government, it will even act quickly to align its analyses with its “partners.” 2. In July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats. 3.The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th “DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing,” that “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.”

4 .One would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise. 5.Chan underscored this: “There was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,” he wrote, referring to the United States Intelligence Community. 6.The task force demanded to know how Twitter came to its unpopular conclusion. Oddly, it included a bibliography of public sources – including a Wall Street Journal article – attesting to the prevalence of foreign threats, as if to show Twitter they got it wrong. 7.Roth, receiving the questions, circulated them with other company executives, and complained that he was “frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau.” 8.He added he was not “comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.”

The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations. 9. He then sent another note internally, saying the premise of the questions was “flawed,” because “we’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter.” Note the italics for emphasis.10. Roth suggested they “get on the phone with Elvis ASAP and try to straighten this out,” to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a “thing” on Twitter. 11. This exchange is odd among other things because some of the “bibliography” materials cited by the FITF are sourced to intelligence officials, who in turn cited the public sources. 12. The FBI responded to Friday’s report by saying it “regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities.”

https://twitter.com/NameRedacted247/status/1604641866342756352

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”..the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.”

Musk Asks Twitter If He Should Step Down (ZH)

Elon Musk, perhaps finally fed up with micromanaging twitter or just really drunk after partying with Qatari royals (and Jared) after today’s terrific World Cup Final… … has asked Twitter users and his 122 million followers whether he should step down as head of the social media site and pledged that he would abide by the result of the 12 hour unscientific poll. Four hours into the vote, with some 9 million votes cast, 56.7% of those polled said Musk should, in fact, stand down. It wasn’t clear what percentage of bots of mailed in ballots had been cast. Musk prefaced the vote by tweeting that “Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won’t happen again.”

Subsequently, in response to tweeted comments that Musk should “hire someone as Twitter CEO… that way when things go wrong you can blame that person, but you still ultimate control as the owner”, the billionaire responded that “The question is not finding a CEO, the question is finding a CEO who can keep Twitter alive.” Musk also clarified to prospective replacements that any new CEO “must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?” Musk then stated that the whole exercise is a Catch 22 as “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.” Which then begs the question how Musk will abide by a poll that seeks his replacement if there is “no successor” in mind.

He then doubled down by paraphrasing Jack Handey and, of course, Gladiator:

Whether Musk was drunk or not when he sent out the tweet (early am Qatari time), the outcome as some cynics have noted, is unlikely to have any material impact on what happens at twitter. Musk’s pledge to hold votes on policy changes came after Twitter on Sunday announced it will remove accounts “created solely” to promote other social media platforms. Accounts promoting rivals and containing links to sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Mastodon will be taken down, the company said. A few hours later the tweet revealing that policy change was deleted.

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“When decisions were being made in 2020 and imposed upon the public, that’s when censorship counted the most..”

Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies (ET)

The recently revealed censorship that has plagued Twitter in recent years is “criminal,” according to former White House COVID adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, as it allowed “lies to be imposed on the public” during a pandemic that wrought untold damage worldwide. “When correct science policy is blocked, people die, and people died from the censorship,” Atlas, a special coronavirus adviser during the Trump administration and contributor to The Epoch Times, said in an interview. Atlas was speaking days after Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, released troves of internal files showing how the previous Twitter team built a blacklist to limit disfavored tweets’ visibility without the knowledge of those using the platform.

Among those flagged was Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, whose tweet criticizing pandemic lockdowns shortly after joining the platform last August got him on the “trends blacklist” preventing the amplification of his tweets. But such revelations, Atlas said, are “only the tip of the iceberg.” “There’s a far larger story here that we need to hear,” he said, which he considers “far more nefarious and more systemic than isolated tweets being pulled down.” “This seems to be criminal behavior, and I think it needs to be investigated in the courts,” he said. Atlas wants to direct attention back to 2020, when health officials followed in the Chinese Communist Party’s footsteps to implement blanket COVID-19 lockdowns. In November of that year, while Atlas was still on the White House’s coronavirus task force, Twitter took down his post that argued mask-wearing was not effective in curbing the spread of the virus—a decision celebrated by some proponents of the measures, including fellow task force member Dr. Deborah Birx.

“One would think that the American public should hear what the adviser to the president is saying during the pandemic of 2020. Yet Twitter decided to simply block that discussion from the public,” he said. [..] Despite most states having a mask mandate until early this year, a number of studies found children and teenagers to be at a far lower risk of getting or dying from COVID-19, even with the emergence of new variants. But the “censorship of 2020,” be it deleting individual tweets, suspending accounts, or blocking the amplification of posts, had done its damage. “When decisions were being made in 2020 and imposed upon the public, that’s when censorship counted the most,” Atlas said.

“It created this illusion that there was a consensus among science and public health policy experts that lockdowns should be imposed; it created and perpetrated lies that if you were opposed to lockdowns, you were choosing the economy over lives, and that if you were opposed to lockdowns, you were somehow calling for letting the infection spread without any mitigation whatsoever,” he said. “They absolutely contributed to policies that killed massive numbers of people and destroyed children and low-income people, who are the most vulnerable. That’s why it’s criminal.”

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They will lose their powers when the new Congress is installed.

Democratic Members Warn Facebook Not to “Backslide” on Censorship (Turley)

With the restoration of free speech protections on Twitter, panic has grown on the left that its control over social media could come to an end. Now, some of the greatest advocates of censorship in Congress are specifically warning Facebook not to follow Twitter in restoring free speech to its platform. In a chilling letter from Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), André Carson (D-Ind.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Facebook was given a not-so-subtle threat that reducing its infamous censorship system will invite congressional action. The letter to Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, is written on congressional stationery “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts.”

With House Republicans pledging to investigate social media censorship when they take control in January, these four Democratic members are trying to force Facebook to “recommit” to censoring opposing views and to make election censorship policies permanent. Otherwise, they suggest, they may be forced to exercise oversight into any move by Facebook to “alter or rollback certain misinformation policies.” In addition to demanding that Facebook preserve its bans on figures like former president Donald Trump, they want Facebook to expand its censorship overall because “unlike other major social media platforms, Meta’s policies do not prohibit posts that make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.”

Clegg is given Schiff’s telephone number to discuss Facebook’s compliance — an ironic contact point for a letter on censoring “disinformation.” After all, Schiff was one of the members of Congress who, before the 2020 presidential election, pushed the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, and he has been criticized for pushing false narratives on Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election. (Schiff has previously pressured social media companies to expand the censorship of opposing views).

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“Dangerous and unfounded election denial content” must be kept off the platform…”

Democrats Like Adam Schiff Are Scrambling To Save Censorship (Devine)

Adam Schiff popped up on CNN’s “State of The Union” show Sunday morning to issue barely veiled threats to Elon Musk for trying to restore free speech on Twitter. Ostensibly, the lame duck chairman of the House Intelligence Committee joined Jake Tapper to crow about expected charges against Donald Trump Monday from his January 6 star chamber. But Schiff moved on to complain about the “big problem right now with social media companies and their failure to moderate content and the explosion of hate on Twitter, the banning of journalists on Twitter.” Then he suggested ominously that Twitter and social media companies may not continue to enjoy “immunity from responsibility and liability.” In other words, keep policing free speech as an arm of the federal government or watch your business go up in smoke.


Schiff is a calculated propagandist, who lies under oath as easily as breathing, and knowingly peddles misinformation to Congress and to media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, whose gullible hosts keep bringing him back on their shows to mislead their audiences. In the dying days of his powerful reign as overseer of the nation’s intelligence agencies, abusing his access to the nation’s secrets, Schiff’s final assignment is to preserve the censorship regime his side of politics entrenched across Big Tech. On Tuesday he, and three other Dems he roped in, wrote a menacing letter “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts” to Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta (Facebook’s new name), warning that, if the company went down Twitter’s path of free speech, the consequences would be dire. “Dangerous and unfounded election denial content” must be kept off the platform.

This is not 2 or 3 years ago, this is now

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“That is a far cry from overthrowing the U.S. government by force of violence.”

“‘Absurd’ To Call Oath Keepers Insurrectionists Or A National Security Threat, Former FBI Agent Testifies”

Former FBI Agent Calls Assertion Oath Keepers are Anti-Government ‘Absurd’ (ET)

The Oath Keepers did not try to overthrow the U.S. government on Jan. 6 and are not a threat to national security because the group is anti-tyranny, not anti-government, a former FBI agent and Department of Defense analyst testified Dec. 15-16 in Alaska Superior Court. John Guandolo, who handled counter-terrorism and criminal investigations during nearly 13 years as an FBI special agent, said he found “absurd” the idea that Oath Keepers tried to overthrow the federal government. Guandolo was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a personal capacity. Some of the Oath Keepers might have broken federal laws on Jan. 6 for allegedly trying to delay the counting of Electoral College votes, Guandolo said, “but to conflate that to being the same as the entire organization wants to overthrow the U.S. government by violence … that’s absurd,” Guandolo said.

“And I think it’s an unprofessional assessment.” Guandolo’s testimony came on the third and fourth days of a state trial to determine if Rep. David Eastman (R-Wasilla) should be removed from office under the Alaska Constitution because he is a life member of the Oath Keepers. Eastman won reelection on Nov. 8 by a 24-point margin. Alaska Superior Court Judge Jack McKenna issued a temporary restraining order preventing the state of Alaska from certifying the House 27th District election results until the trial ends. Former GOP candidate Randall Kowalke—who left the Republican Party in 2019—sued Eastman personally in July, claiming a loyalty clause in the Alaska Constitution should bar him from office because the Oath Keepers allegedly advocate for the overthrow of the federal government.

Earlier in the bench trial before McKenna, two analysts from centers on domestic extremism testified that the Oath Keepers went into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and tried to overthrow the government. Testifying from his office in Dallas, Guandolo told the judge there is no evidence to support that accusation. He ripped the testimony of analysts Jonathan Lewis and Matthew Kriner as “grossly incomplete” and “wholly unprofessional.” Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and Oath Keepers Florida leader Kelly Meggs were found guilty of seditious conspiracy on Nov. 29 for actions on Jan. 6, in a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Washington. Four other defendants were acquitted of seditious conspiracy, but convicted of other offenses.

“The phrase that I saw most often [in indictments] was that so-and-so intended to affect the government by stopping or delaying the congressional proceeding, which was to certify the election,” Guandolo said when questioned by defense attorney Joseph Miller. “That is a far cry from overthrowing the U.S. government by force of violence.”

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“$300 trillion of global debt and $2 quadrillion of quasi debt in the form of derivatives can only end in currencies going to zero..”

US Doublespeak Will Not Stop Gold’s Imminent Surge (Von Greyerz)

The clouds look extremely dark for 2023 and beyond. As I have pointed out above, there is no attempt to reach a peace settlement in Ukraine. Weapons and money are pouring in to keep the war going. And the sanctions forced upon Europe by the US are having a devastating effect for the citizens of most European countries. Energy costs are up 2-3X or more for many consumers and food inflation in Germany for example jumped 21% year on year in November. In the UK, many ordinary people cannot afford to keep their heating on or to eat properly. And this is before the cold winter sets in. The situation in Ukraine seems to deteriorate and with Russia and the US involved, as well as China in the periphery, it could easily escalate.

But as I have spelt out numerous times, $300 trillion of global debt and $2 quadrillion of quasi debt in the form of derivatives can only end in currencies going to zero and sovereign borrowers defaulting. A global sovereign default should be seen as an indisputable fact and it is only a question of how long it takes. These events are normally a process. As Hemingway said, you go bankrupt “Gradually and then suddenly”. The beginning can be a slow process and then at some point the shock comes so fast that no one will have time to react. So no-one must believe that there will be time to get out once the early “gradual” phase starts. Just to be clear, the gradual phase is here already although the world is in denial. The buy the dip mentality is still prevailing as evidenced by the partial recovery in stock markets.

Few realise that this is it and the next devastating fall in stocks is going to fool practically all investors. The majority will not get out but hope for a correction so they can exit at a higher level. And once the correction comes, they will be bullish again. Once everyone is back into the market it will fall again. Most of the investors will be fooled most of the time until their portfolio is virtually worthless. The Western world hasn’t experienced a real bear market since 1929-32. That time it took 25 years for the Dow to recover to the 1929 high. The generosity of Central banks has made stock investments a one way game since the early 1980s. But now the game is up and few will realise it until they have lost everything. So the “suddenly” will be like an earthquake seemingly coming out of nowhere. It can come in 2023 or it might take a few years.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 19 2022

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  • #123817

    Pablo Picasso Portrait de femme (Dora Maar) 1943   • One Year Ago, Russia Gave The West A Last Chance (Lukyanov) • A Lexicon for Disaster (Scott
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 19 2022]

    #123818
    Germ
    Participant
    #123819
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Check this shit out

    #123820
    oxymoron
    Participant

    That’s right – A MAJOR KILLING FORCE. GLOBALLY.

    I didn’t realise I was so effective but there you have it. The WHO has worked out I am a killing guy just like native peoples the world over. My body – your choice – to get killed by me and my mind powers. Your Vaccine will not stand a chance against the power of my Anti-Science witchcraft.
    Stand and fear me and my army of dumb-dumbs who will kill you with a thought.

    #123821

    Bodies breathe in, bodies breathe out.
    Expanded with oxygen, bodies continue.
    Bodies have limited numbers of breaths
    And the last exhalation’s the one that brings death.

    It sure feels like cheyne-stokes is happening now.
    Musk better dump the covid files before he goes.

    #123822
    Positive Dennis
    Participant

    You really should not post things like the Dam Schiff rumors. It really hurts your brand and site as you have no idea if it is true.

    #123823

    Does anyone else think that the face of Adam Schiff has that above-mentioned incident written all over it?

    #123824

    Was that a typo, Positive Dennis? or a Freudian slip?
    I agree with you- it’s just a rumor- but Schiff has a really dodgy demeanor and lies just as Turley says.

    #123825
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    Germ’s input much appreciated. To add to the anecdota evidence: one fully vaccinated friend felt ‘really awful’, left work early to take a nap on the couch and never woke. Recently, another active neighbor has been diagnosed with GI cancer, but his treatment has been suspended because of embolisms in both lungs and one leg.

    Does anyone here follow Jessica Rose? With doctoral, and post-doctoral work in computational biology and immunology, she seems a natural to be able to sift something out of the “noise” (IF data is provided in relatively good faith)

    #123826
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    That’s interesting, and perhaps even useful. Adam Schiff publicly states that he does not know what criminal is [quote: “if that’s not criminal then I don’t know what is.”]. That moral and cognitive disability goes a long way toward explaining his habitually antisocial behaviors.

    #123827
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “DOJ Arrests Sam Bankman-Fried for Running out of Bribery Money” –BBee

    Truth.

    “Spain Advances ‘Menstrual Leave’ Legislation for Women Experiencing Period Cramps”

    Thanks Spain. You are demonstrating that women are more expensive and more absent workers that companies should avoid however possible. Setting back women’s rights by decades. That’s what companies said in the 40’s and you’re making them right.

    “Was what happened inevitable? The argument that “we had no choice,” often heard at the highest level in Moscow, is problematic because it effectively means that Russia’s previous policies were wrong.”

    I certainly understand this principle in the sense of Sun Tzu, if they had appropriate genius, they could have played so no war would be apparent. However, that’s not plausible on earth. Russia started from a position of almost total defeat back in Clinton’s Bill Browder – Hermitage Capital era. Removing the Western parasites was almost superhuman act, and keeping them out for decades was required and yet unlikely. Then sacrificing everything to build everything. Year after year. Decades. To pry political power back from oligarchs, like Gazprom, most who were agents of the West, Russian but living in London. To slowly stop street violence, general crime and mafia. Years. Even now set back decades thanks to the West.

    So what exactly did Sun Tzu have planned in the Russian position: no civil order, no troops, no payroll, no weapons? Something, I’m sure, but we are mortal men.

    Second approach: so your deranged neighbor comes over every week with a gun trying to kill you. Yes, you are clever and de-escalate regularly, but at some point, measures will fail. You live with this every day, years and years as he has more dementia and more violence. So what are you supposed to do with a violent, unhinged neighbor completely separated from reality? Who because of non-stop delusions means and intends to kill you, your family, and your whole house?

    There ISN’T much solution to that. Lacking policemen as we do, most probably what will happen is, he will come over some time, you can’t de-escalate, and you kill him. Then people who never lifted a finger to help you before will be all judgey and mad. Telling us all how somebody else should have done it, somebody else should have done work, somebody else should have acted differently, while I sit on my yoga ball and sip lattes. While the people we extracted free hard work from: Russia, sit in houses from 1970 with the standard of living of 1949 some places. We’re only headed there at NASCAR speed: they’ve already arrived.

    “Both the U.S. and Russian arsenals will become untethered from treaty-based constraint, leading to a new arms race for which there can be only one finishing line — total nuclear war.”

    This is the plan: get people to fight and kill each other while we hide out on the side. Doesn’t matter who, doesn’t matter where; just: they die, we live.

    EU Sued over Anti-Russia Sanctions (RT)”

    Hilarious for a Political Union with no rule of law. But sue and make them prove it, demonstrate it to the world. So when Global South goes the other way, they’ll just equally steal all EU/London’s property? Why not?

    Hey, Qatar: wasn’t that part of the people who hooked up with NATO and illegally invaded a sovereign country and murdered a couple million people to arrange a pipeline? Instead of just signing an honest transit agreement they could have for 1/10th the cost?

    Yes, they are those illegal, psychopathic, child-murdering, thieving bastards.

    “ Will the Fallout from “Qatargate” Splatter the European Commission? (NC)”

    Well, let’s see: they had no shame murdering 1,000,000 iraqi children, no shame in causing 1,000 years of birth defects with depleted uranium, no shame in invading Syria to kill another million, no shame in funding ISIS, no shame in killing the US Diplomat to move arms from Libya through Turkey to arm human-eating ISIS soldiers, and are still supporting constant shelling of civilians and infrastructure in Damascus?

    Um: my guess would be, probably not?

    Omicron what? I’m seeing ads for Covid vaccines again here. For “Covid Variants” (that don’t exist) and Omicron (That doesn’t hurt you). I’ve stopped because people are just that dumb. Go ahead then. I’ve said my piece. I’ll make money on your death. Deflation + empty houses. I already told you not to as strong as I’m able.

    “TWITTER FILES Supplemental (Taibbi)”

    This was covered thoroughly at least once, as news and Twitter moves lightning fast. From this story detail, they collared in the FBI whistleblower who revealed the FBI was essentially fabricating fake crime numbers for political ends. In that case, widespread domestic terrorism, while at the same time the FBI had not yet looked for the DC bomber in almost a year. That Agent’s issue was that he was TAKEN OFF CHILD TRAFFICKING to fabricate said non-existent domestic danger data.

    So the FBI is the same here, as proven elsewhere, regularly: they call Twitter and the rest and demand they likewise fabricate data for the Narrative. …And doesn’t that imply an “Or else”? So that’s at least two levels of Human Rights violation in 1A? Plus illegally regulating a corporation which is the jurisdiction of a different federal department? Handcuffs where? A guess the FBI is going to arrest itself now?

    All of this confirms all social media is a subsidiary of the FBI and Derp State. At this point, if not all along, as we can prove elsewhere.

    So why did they never need to turn a profit? Who printed the money for the “Angel Investors” that meant they are not Capitalist corporations and were under no economic pressure or risk of bankruptcy ever? Where did that $40Trillion of lost money accounted by Austin Fitts go to?

    “ Musk Asks Twitter If He Should Step Down (ZH)”

    Musk is only in for 2 Scaramuccis right now. So they’re going to tag-team it off to somebody else. The danger to his kids and family is too high right now although he’s very calm about it. It’s a plan as they Mob-arrange 5 minutes of hate against a Person, a Name. It’s social. Irrational. If you keep flip-flopping names they can’t do that. While the figureheads come and go, the background people stay the same and get things done. The faster you flip them the less The Narrative™ works.

    “Twitter Censorship Contributed to Destructive Pandemic Policies (ET)”

    Maybe. How would we know when we don’t let Doctors speak? Some doctors say yes, some say no: very normal. But Chad at Twitter becomes your medical provider and decides between the two doctors’ opinions. On your behalf.

    “One would think that the American public should hear what the adviser to the president is saying during the pandemic of 2020. Yet Twitter decided to simply block that discussion from the public,”

    But Chad is my doctor! He knows more than the paid Federal expert about this. We also are not allowed to know who Chad is or how he decides. …And he decides when the FBI look into his pro-pedophilia social media accounts. Yoel.

    “ Democratic Members Warn Facebook Not to “Backslide” on Censorship (Turley)”

    Says a lot of things, doesn’t it? When I ask “Who are these people working for?” Not the seated President, clearly. So…doesn’t this make Facebook by definition an illegal, unregistered PAC? Not Section 230? Aren’t all their actions illegal, unregistered like-kind campaign donations? These are each specifically addressed in Trump’s Dec speech I linked. The one he was keeping the media’s eye off by selling POGs.

    “Dangerous and unfounded election denial content” must be kept off the platform…”

    I agree. Can we arrest anyone saying “Russia” now? Mueller said that was fake 4 years ago.

    “That is a far cry from overthrowing the U.S. government by force of violence.”

    Overthrowing with zero weapons when statistically they own 5 guns a piece. Tricky-tricky. Their plan since the ‘90s: they just KNOW these right wing rednecks are violent inbreds. They just need them to take a swing so we can crack down. Or make it up like in Oklahoma, the only office with all the crooked Fannie Mae records in it.

    We need, depends, must have, people fighting each other. Must get the right to shoot the trannies and vice versa. If they show Christian restraint, all is lost.

    Suckers. Most of them aren’t even Christians and still won’t do wrong.

    “US Doublespeak Will Not Stop Gold’s Imminent Surge (Von Greyerz)”

    Armstrong says inflation has nothing to do with it, well-proven. Gold only goes up with loss of faith in government, that is, the normal system and currencies. Unf, he predicts terrible year starting next month, and real war starting 2023.

    Bourdain. Standard Hotel. Standard was famous for this. Probably even has Family Guy jokes like Kevin Spacy. And Weinstein. And others. It was pointed out Standard had 50 barrels of acids and caustic liquids delivered to the basement to “clean up the mess”. That should be easy to prove. Were they delivered and are they in storage? 10 minute proof.

    That’s the whole purpose of the Standard Hotel and the reason Schiff and Lindsay Graham say whatever they’re told to. Note little Lindsay was relieved and went straight for almost a few months after McCain died, but then couldn’t help himself and was back on the original plan since then. Doesn’t happen, fellas? WTF was all of Epstein then??? Dude: YOU’RE LOOKING AT IT. I can point your eyes for you, but I can’t make it go into your brain. That’s up to you. Denial ain’t just a river, and my Congressman never done no wrong.

    Point here: so they have enough power to take Twitter and install Musk but not enough power to remove Standard Hotel or Congressmen where a single scandal should unseat them? They can remove Epstein and his Mossad handler but not the well-known, on-Federal-record Client list? Huh, sounds like their control in this secret civil war is still limited. But as said, public people now bring up Kennedy regularly and nothing happens to them. Foreign governments buck the dollar and nothing happens to them.

    Rumors? You mean like we had about Iraq not having WMDs or ties to al Qaeda, about subprime not being contained, Trump winning, Epstein existing, RussiaRussia being fake, Covid being overblown, the response being dangerous and causing punishing inflation, and the vaccine not being either safe OR effective? All those were rumors at some point — and a hundred other things — but we discussed them because we are adults capable of adult human thought and not scared mouse-men. We also discussed a few things that turned out to be wrong: the banking system not going down, for instance, or the US$ not being unseated. Russia not invading. No one was harmed by our adult discussions of things that may or may not happen, may or may not be real. No one cares what we say on the Internet. So why afraid of it? If it’s false it’ll be easy to lambaste as utter nonsense.

    Yesterday: Don’t be silly. Fermi’s Paradox is saying “Black Swans don’t exist because I’ve never seen one.” That’s keenly unsmart.

    …I mean BESIDES all the aliens and their ships people keep reporting and have for centuries? Now with live videos? Millions of people seeing a thing and filling the internet end to end talking about it is not evidence, of course. …They’re not experts. …I guess that goes for the U.S. Navy too. Posting official live videos every scientist can see. So Science is not saying the U.S. Navy doesn’t exist? Or what? No, they #AntiScientifically remove data that is not supporting their pre-chosen conclusion. With its pre-chosen 1 Billion deaths.

    Unsmart.

    Here’s the essential point: Communism they used to kill 100M people and control most governments East and West has been discredited and they can’t get people to take the mind-virus like zombie ants. They don’t have a Plan B, so they merely repackage Communism as “Green New Deal” and “Global Warming.” That’s why the answer to all and every challenge, corruption, income disparity, war, food, environment, student loans, housing, is all ONE solution: the solution is de-facto Communism, where the rich live in Dachas and the poor have no meat, shoes, or cars. They only need the people to bite on one, any of the 5 fake made-up stories, religions, that all lead to the one true religion: Communism, where you have misery spread widely and I fly from Odessa to Switzerland for shopping.

    It’s not going well for them, people hate all five stories, but that’s why all fabricated, clearly generated non-problems like Dutch Fertilizer, all have the same answer: More power for ME, no power for YOU. Eeeet ze bugs!!! Eeet zem!

    Fermi’s Paradox is just another un-smart basis — and open logical fallacy — to attain the same end: All for me, None for you!

    #123828
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    My Dad had quite a few secrets. Some of which I can only suspect (from snippets and deductions), but a few others he admitted freely at the end of his very interesting and eventful life, before taking the remainder to his grave.

    Here’s one. For a number of good and valid reasons he was Oppy’s driver and body guard during the time just prior to and during the actual testing of the bomb. On one occasion as they were walking back out to the car after lunch at the Officers Club, Oppy turns to Dad and in a deeply earnest manner asks, “Have I eaten ?” .

    #123829
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Here’s another few of G.W. Smith’s interesting stories (this must be reminiscence day):

    He was first and foremost a pilot (15,000 logged flight hours) and according to him ALL long-hour combat pilots had encounters with so-called “UFO s (which back in that day were called “Foo Fighters”). The thing of it was, though, that military fliers knew for damned certain that to even HINT of such an encounter to anyone other than another pilot was GUARANTEED to end your promotions and flying career in general. So they only talked about it amongst themselves. Lots of nervous jokes and laughter, but no official reports.

    #123830
    Dora
    Participant

    Edward Dowd.

    “In 2021 I figured out the plan was quarterly boosters for life and calculated Pfizer’s revenue would be $350 billion a year if that came to fruition. This MP from the UK confirms this. Luckily we have put a crimp in this plan.”

    https://gettr.com/post/p224uga273f

    #123832
    Sweet Kenny
    Participant

    I find it amusing that Positive Dennis advises Ilargi against posting certain items because they can’t be proven and so hurts Ilargi’s “brand” – PD must be new. Ilargi’s “brand” IS the unproven (Covid, Ukraine, Politics, and banal evil). I support this site, do you? If Ilargi ever hesitated to express himself then that is unfortunate as I appreciate him for it. I have no idea if the child trafficking is true but you have to admit there are enough coincidences to ask questions.

    #123833
    Kassandra
    Participant

    Two people I know did not kill themselves are Chris Cornell and Anthony Bourdain.

    I saw a UFO once, late at night, in Scotland, about an hour outside Aberdeen. It was 1997. I was with a friend, who saw it too. Back then I kept a journal and I still have that journal entry, so it’s one of those things I know happened, I documented it. It looked exactly like you’d expect a flying saucer to look in the sky at night. Now, it could have been some sort of secret aircraft, I’ll certainly never know exactly what it was. But it was definitely an “Unidentified flying object” the likes I have never seen, flying in a pattern nothing else flies in.

    #123835
    Kassandra
    Participant

    Another thing about Bourdain, something weird definitely happened to him around the time he moved to CNN. His show changed a lot, became pretty obvious propaganda. Perhaps it always was, but this was blatant. All you have to do is watch his episode on Libya to see it in your face. Sometimes I wonder if he did see too much, got too close, and needed to be dealt with.

    #123836
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    The NATOstan lies just go on and on. of course.

    #123837
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Xmas music. Deal with it. Mavericks
    ***
    Today’s Yogi tea tag secret decoder ring message: Drink your Ovaltine. Life is best lived by focusing on your goals and dancing through all other distractions.

    Relevant song: Say Ladeo

    ***

    Today’s Superspreader:
    Today’s “Superspreader

    Especially relevant, I feel, is this:

    “U.S. Department of Defense issued a ‘COVID-19 Research’ contract 3 Months before COVID-19 was known to officially exist”

    But uniquely saddening to me is this:

    “Famous Church Displays Nativity Scene Promoting Fifth Dose of Covid ‘Vaccine’

    #123838
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Musk Asks Twitter If He Should Step Down (ZH)

    I double-down on my assessment of Musk: a very high-functioning Trump. The man knows how to play the media.

    ***

    My Blue Balloon

    ***

    We can dance. Just get us drunk enough:

    Fiesta

    #123839
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Repeat after me: We Are SO Fucked, or WASF. C’mon, kids, rage with me! it’ll be fun! Shout it loud until you’re proud! Fucked! Fucked! Fucked! Paint the world a depressing sheen of cockroach turd brown. It won’t change a thing, won’t help you deal with the consequences of the many things fucking with us, will just make you angrier and grumpier and more depressed and (“science says”) trigger incurable erectile dysfunction and/or unrepentant dry twat syndrome, but it will give you a brief buzz followed by icky feelings. You know, like tobacco!

    Feeling Fucked? Crawl Off That Dagger Dildo and Smile

    …or not.

    #123840
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    ” Now, it could have been some sort of secret aircraft, I’ll certainly never know exactly what it was. But it was definitely an “Unidentified flying object” the likes I have never seen, flying in a pattern nothing else flies in.”
    <>
    “Here’s another few of G.W. Smith’s interesting stories (this must be reminiscence day):”

    I love first-hand accounts of weirdness. Thank you. Very much. 🙂

    #123841
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Thanx to Eddie Izzard, we now know that trays are the new vakzine. 😉

    #123842
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    And now, to probably confuse and/or piss people off at me even more, I’ll comment on this:

    If they’d posse-d up and used the data they had to go kill some traffickers, they might still be alive and so might some kids. As it is, they made some media for media consumers (that’s us, btw) to consume and feel feelings about and therefore send some paypal $%$ to some worthy cause.

    Rage is a very powerful tool. I’m all for using it… when the enemy is available and can be pounded into bloody concrete pulp.

    bosco’s Moral Mantra: The Good Samaritan helps his fellow man where he finds it needing help, then and there. The Good Samaritan smites evil where he finds it, then and there.

    Anything else is just talk-talk and imaginary action-at-a-distance, a powerful illusion provided by the entrancing hypnotic power of talk-talk and the magic of media.

    Wii!!!

    #123843
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    #123844
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “It looks like the mRNA is transferring from the vaccinated to the unvaccinated”

    Dr Peter McCullough

    Don’t date the vaccinated

    Don’t shake their hands, and for God’s sake don’t kiss them, much as marry them.

    Like ever

    Dr Christiane Northrup is starting a dating service for the unvaccinated.

    She says the unvaccinated have the “golden DNA” while the vaccinated’s blood (and DNA) is tainted.

    You can’t even have a chance at starting a family and having relatively health children with the vaccinated.

    It like they have the Mark of Cain

    .

    #123845
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Don’t be silly. Fermi’s Paradox is saying “Black Swans don’t exist because I’ve never seen one.” That’s keenly unsmart.”

    No, you’re wrong. Fermi’s Paradox says this: “Having never seen an ET black swan, here is/are a/several reason(s) why this may be so.”

    What political hay-makers make of it is something altogether different… just as what political hay-makers make of anthropogenic global climate disruption is something altogether (and I use that absolute here because it is accurate) different.

    You’re a brilliant man, Dr. D. There is much I admire and enjoy about you. I often learn from you. But your tolerance for bullshit when it serves your agenda does not recommend itself to me as something to enjoy or admire, and I only learn from it negatively: behavior NOT to emulate.

    But egos are like that. Humanity’s favorite blinders. I recommend you inform yourself on a thing before speaking on how “keenly unsmart” it is. It will prevent you from making an ass of yourself on that topic. I also recommend you learn to acknowledge when you’ve made a simple mistake: it will prevent you from making an unrepentant ass of yourself.

    Fermi’s paradox

    “Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi’s name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi blurted out, “But where is everybody?” (although the exact quote is uncertain).[3][4]

    “There have been many attempts to resolve the Fermi paradox,[5][6] such as suggesting that intelligent extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare, that the lifetime of such civilizations is short, or that they exist but (for various reasons) humans see no evidence.”

    We can do better than this? Are we curious independent thinkers who share and study (often difficult) data, or are we just another echo chamber full of OOC: Opinionated Old Cranks? I fear I will soon have to abandon online discourse like this for lack of quality interlocutors. But then, it has to be that way, because any club that will tolerate the likes of me isn’t good enough for the likes of me. (bosco’s paradox, stolen from Groucho Marx)

    Now you’ve REALLY pissed me off. I’m so mad, I’ma share this link of charming images from my dreadful blog:

    Snow men and Treehenge

    Speaking of solstice stuff:

    SATURDAY NIGHTS IN FAT CITY

    Still, all things considered, Saturnalia rightly belongs to Saturn. During solsticial Saturnalia, a temporary Golden Age was enacted. (It is only fair to mention that Cronus’s reign was also considered a Golden Age for mankind – if not for His kids.) Again quoting EB’47 :

    “All business, public and private, was at a standstill; schools were closed, executions and military operations did not take place, slaves were temporarily free, feasting with and even waited on by their masters and saying what they chose. All and sundry were greeted with ‘io Saturnalia’ (i.e. ‘yeah Saturn!’), and presents were freely exchanged, the traditional ones being wax candles and little clay dolls.

    “Concerning those quaint gifts, the antiquaries had a story telling that an old prophecy bade the earliest inhabitants of Latium send ‘fota ’ to Saturn and heads to Pluto” … “that they interpreted this as meaning human sacrifices, but that Hercules advised them to use lights and not human heads” (apparently fota can mean both ‘head’ and ‘light’; the two separated only by a twist of pronunciation). “Gambling with dice, generally forbidden, was allowed, a custom which is exactly paralleled from Nepal. Saturnus himself was untied, presumably to come out and join in the fun.”
    No kidding; I didn’t make any of this up (except for the part about the Chip Monks, and Kindasorta Didbutdidn’t). Strange bit of scholarly lore. Nepal? Beats me. I don’t write encyclopedias; I just read them.

    So Hercules possibly saved innumerable criminals and prisoners from sacrificial beheadings by suggesting a semantic sleight of hand. As shell games go, switching homonyms is subtler than swapping a stone in a blanket for a swaddling babe and, apparently, more effective; Pluto didn’t even burp. The bit about untying Saturnus’ feet alludes to the ropes of wool that were normally kept tied around the feet of Saturnus’ statues (probably to prevent Him from gadding about collecting those unspeakable “fota’s” that presumably were symbolized by little clay dolls). One can see why the term ‘pagan’ has come to have a bad rep, just as modern Christians avoid seeming too… Inquisitive?

    On such Dark Nights, candles would be appropriate, of course, but “little clay dolls”? If candles replaced heads, what would dolls replace? Specifically little clay ones? Baked in ovens? Little terra cotta gingerbread people? The suggestions are grisly but the truth is unknown and I have a point to make before I finish this paragraph. I have a theory regarding gifts of candles and little clay dolls. May I suggest that this marks the start of the tradition of senseless Christmas gifts? You know: “I didn’t know what to get you, so I got this little clay doll…” One can envision false gratitude as the father of all irrational gift-giving, observing how one display of false enthusiasm (“I LOVE it!”) begets more of the same. Eventually, entire industries would be built around the mandatory giving of the unnecessary. Greeting cards, pet rocks, fruitcakes, Tickle-Me Elmoes… no wonder Cronus ate His kids.

    Mythology is a strange thing. Consider the Christmas story. Camels and Zoroastrian priests (the Magi, or Wise Men), Caesarian tax rates, tinseled fir trees, Judean Messianic prophesies, virginal mothers, shepherds, stables, stars and lowing cattle – what all of these have to do with our annual passage through the Dark Days is almost as muddled in my mind as is the relationship between clay dolls and candles, or the family tree of the gods (which seems effectively symbolized in the glitteringly intertwined chaos of the modern day Yule tree).

    You may note that candles get around, from Saturnalia through Channukah’s Feast of Lights (there’s a name to make a headlight-hungry god happy) to Christmas – which is certainly an highly illuminated event. A candle is to ritual pageantry what alcohol is to taverns and revelry: How else ya gonna set the place on fire?

    “Ritual pageantry.” A happy mid-twentieth century American childhood ideally included a series of happy Christmases spiritually jazzed by sacred music, an abundance of shining lights, bright colors, innocent material lust and a week off from school. Many of us portrayed Wise Men or shepherds or Immaculate Virgins in Christmas pageants. To kneel onstage in front of one’s church fellows in celebration of the birth of a divine being, wearing sacred robes of bath and hoods of towel while carrying some enormous stylization of a shepherd’s crook, was one of the stranger yet more comforting events of my young life. Blue stage lights in my eyes, little Johnny Hauwiller giggling about thieving ‘shepherd crooks’, parents and parishioners before us in the darkened church’s pews: imagine Sir Laurence Olivier attempting Hamlet in pajamas. Of course he could pull it off – and so did we when I and several other prepubescent lads pulled back together in mock fright while angels in sheets, tin foil wings and jiggling haloes, appeared from the backstage heavens singing hymns to the baby Jesus. I imagine we looked more like The Three Stooges recoiling from a sudden adversary – perhaps the landlord or a man in a gorilla suit – than we resembled The Three Wise Men shrinking in fearful awe.

    ‘Three’, by the way, is a Biblically unsubstantiated number only guessed from the three Biblically mentioned categories of gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Three gifts: three guys. Sure. The Magi were high priests of a sect, originating from Persia and beyond, thought to be the precursor of Zoroastrianism /Mithraism. This is the religion from which the mighty Zarathustra spake thusly, long before providing Richard Strauss the inspiration, via Nietsche’s book of the same name, for Thus Spake Zarathustra, Strauss’s symphonic tone poem. This is the music that provided such eerie musical accompaniment to those grisly slo-mo shots, in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, of apemen (or men in gorilla suits) discovering the mighty power of The Club as they triumphantly smashed bones and brothers into bits beside the silent and mysterious monolith. Note that this giant stone was not wrapped in a blanket – nor in wrapping paper.

    The Magi were regarded as the real thing : high-tech voodoo practitioners capable of performing wondrous miracles, hence the word Magi-c. They certainly brought appropriate gifts for newlywed out-of-towners down on their luck and camped with their firstborn in a smelly stable. Gold, frankincense and myrrh: cash, room deodorizer and cologne. Clay dolls and candles wouldn’t have been nearly so thoughtful, yes?

    As a time of ritual giving, the solstices of times past had certain advantages. Being at the end of harvest and before the winter planting, there was both abundance and leisure. When else would an agrarian community have both the materials and time to make, for example, candles and little dolls? It was the one time of the year when the larder was full. The term ‘larder’ derives from ‘lard’, and lard was a precious commodity in ancient, even recent, times past. Fat is one of those instable isotopes of which there is always either too much or too little.

    Lard kept people warm, both through calories and insulation. Equally or even more importantly, lard made candles and oil for lamps. It was so precious a commodity that whale blubber made fortunes for any Ahab able to capitalize a whaling ship, manage it well and land a few fat whales.

    Fat led humanity beyond. The quest for lard led men to Arctic waters and into oversized rowboats to harpoon Leviathan. Imagine, for comparison, taking on a grizzly bear with a Swiss army knife. Oh, I’m sure that Hercules or Sir Laurence Olivier could pull it off, at least against a man in a leviathan suit, but we’re talking about men in wooden boats playing picador/matador to the largest water buffaloes known to man. Lard was, in fact, so scarce that soap and bathing were largely ignored until recent times because of the scarcity of fat for making soap. A great perfume industry toiled to hide our stench from each other. Hence the overnight fortunes for whaler captains if they scored some ambergris, that mysterious substance (essentially whale bile) so vital to the perfumes of previous centuries.

    Solstice time was dark and candles weren’t cheap. They made perfect gifts. Little clay dolls? Some mysteries remain impenetrable. Some of the harsher realities of human existence remain – not unspeakable nor unprintable but – unpalatable? Ask Cronus, or whomever you can find to answer to the name: Father Time.

    One reason that a good or ‘real’ Christmas is so difficult to achieve nowadays is today’s relative absence of scarcity. A famine of abundance grips the land. How to celebrate abundance in a culture whose poorest often have more than did all but antiquity’s wealthiest? Who have little or no concept of how incredibly wealthy they are? Only one hundred and fifty years ago, December was Fat City. Early winter was when there was both a pig to roast and an apple to put in its mouth, along with time on your hands (unless you were a factory worker). Even slaves were able to take it relatively easy, which partially explains the Roman tradition of temporary manumission during solstice. Indulge a slave with time on its hands lest it plan a successful revolution. Keep it drunk and generally sated.

    Anciently, there were numerous Roman festivals besides Saturnalia: Bacchanalia, Lupercalia, Liberalia and more. Other cultures and countries had theirs as well, but Roman culture is about as representative of European culture as it gets. Saturnalia was the biggie, the great survivor from antiquity. A study of Saturnalia will suffice to trace the pagan roots of today’s winter religious festivities of contemporary Christendom.

    #123846
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Dr Christiane Northrup is starting a dating service for the unvaccinated. She says the unvaccinated have the “golden DNA” while the vaccinated’s blood (and DNA) is tainted.”

    The future looks weirder and weirder by the hour. Netflix writers are just this morning discussing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale integrating the above as a new plot twist.

    #123847
    zerosum
    Participant

    Adam Schiff never gives proof for his accusations/statements/slurs/rumors.
    Overthrowing with zero weapons when statistically they own 5 guns a piece. – J6 conclusions
    ————
    Jubilee – debts would be forgiven, rich lenders won’t collect. Poor borrower will survive Social/economic system will survive.
    “$300 trillion of global debt and $2 quadrillion of quasi debt in the form of derivatives can only end in currencies going to zero..”
    ———-
    No one cares what we say on the Internet. So why afraid of it? If it’s false it’ll be easy to lambaste as utter nonsense.
    ———
    “It looks like the mRNA is transferring from the vaccinated to the unvaccinated” – Dr Peter McCullough
    It looks like the immune system is not strong enough to prevent the transfer of mRNA. – zerosum
    ———-

    #123848
    Germ
    Participant

    “Findings:
    Four outcomes met the threshold for a statistical signal following BNT162b2 vaccination including pulmonary embolism (PE; RR = 1.54), acute myocardial infarction (AMI; RR = 1.42), disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC; RR = 1.91), and immune thrombocytopenia (ITP; RR = 1.44). ”

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X22014931

    Good god! :

    43 y/o: pulmonary embolism

    La denuncia della 43enne Charissa Olivia Klamn: anemia, embolia polmonare e microcoaguli dopo vaccino Moderna

    29 y/o: pulmonary thromboembolism

    29enne muore per tromboembolia polmonare il 28 novembre, 6 giorni dopo il vaccino Moderna. Il 25 novembre scriveva su Facebook: “Ho fatto il vaccino, da ieri non riesco a respirare”

    60 y/: Sudden cerebral aneurysm

    Aneurisma cerebrale improvviso. E’ morto a 60 anni nelle scorse ore l’assessore bresciano. E’ il secondo uomo politico bresciano morto per malore improvviso in poche ore

    46 y/o: cerebral hemorrhage

    Emanuele Calligaris è morto per emorragia cerebrale a causa del vaccino AstraZeneca. I periti della Procura scrivono che era un soggetto a rischio trombosi con anticorpi anti PF4

    I could go on and on and on ….

    TVASF

    #123849
    Germ
    Participant

    TVASF

    #123850
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    When it comes to UFO’s, or just about any other subject, especially those which have been intentionally suppressed and ridiculed, one really needs to do a deep dive to get your bearings. Even then, one often encounters many side tunnels to explore which connect to the main theme. Time and interest then determine how much you invest for the level of knowledge and expertise you desire. The more puzzle pieces you successfully connect, the clearer the picture appears.

    It also requires a strong mind, one that can remain grounded with reality and everyday life, so that your sanity and functionality remain intact. The Alice who pursues the rabbit is never the same one that returns to the surface. And sadly, some never find there way back.

    One site I visit regularly is called Eyes On Cinema, which has a UFO channel containing many rare first-hand UFO accounts and interviews. There is nothing that compares, other than the actual experience, of hearing someone describe their encounter shortly after it occurred. Or listening to the sheer panic that often engulfs abductees under hypnosis as they describe what happened to them.

    #123851
    Germ
    Participant

    Super Vaxxed Japan!

    Jap

    TVASF

    #123852
    Germ
    Participant

    Hahaha!

    TVASF

    #123853
    Germ
    Participant

    I took my mother for the Covid jab – four days later she was dead

    ” His exact words will haunt me for the rest of my life: ‘Mrs Kelly would be here today had she not been given the vaccine’ He was asked by the coroner to clarify his findings and he stated that it was ‘fatal for her.’ ”

    I took my mother for the Covid jab – four days later she was dead

    TVASF

    #123854

    I must have watched the Boys Keep Swinging a dozen times easily by now, and I’m still in awe of how that’s not a band, but a machine. Director is Carlos Alomar on guitar, you got the bald girl -always forget her name- on bass, the drummer I’ve ever seen, Bowie at perfect ease and confidence, and on top of that Earl Slick going fully guitar bonkers. How sure do you have to be to say: yeah, Earl, go ahead, do your thang, improvise?!

    #123855
    kultsommer
    Participant

    @DBS
    Thanks for the snippet of Oppy’s existence.
    Speaking of, last week watched beautiful documentary (on Am- prime) about Mars rowers, bearing the title “Oppy” after the longer lasting one. Reminder of the USA that I loved.

    #123856
    Germ
    Participant

    God Speed Gonzalo ….
    Let’s pray he survives the imminent Russian invasion of Kharkiv.

    TVASF

    #123857

    Dennis,

    You really should not post things like the Dam Schiff rumors. It really hurts your brand and site as you have no idea if it is true.

    I sort of fundamentally disagree with this. We can’t always wait for 50 fact checkers to confirms things. In this case I posted 2 separate pics of allegations. So I run with that. Not because I know it’s true, but because I want people to think about it. If we don’t take that leap, what are the odds we will ever find the truth? I side with Kenny:

    If Ilargi ever hesitated to express himself then that is unfortunate as I appreciate him for it. I have no idea if the child trafficking is true but you have to admit there are enough coincidences to ask questions.

    I have the idea that child -sexuaL- abuse is such a big issue in the US -and worldwide- that we would hurt the victims if we didn’t ring the bell before we’re 100% sure.

    #123858
    kultsommer
    Participant

    The only Bowie’s song that occasionally I may actively search on YT is Ziggy Stardust. Beauty of that guitar riff is something. Others are OK, if by chance on the car radio, on my non-classical, non-country, non-jazz/blues day.

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