Dec 202022
 
 December 20, 2022  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Saul Leiter 463 1956

 

Managing the Ukraine Denial Narrative (Crooke)
News From The NATOstan-Imposed Meat Grinder (Escobar)
Why Time Isn’t Ripe For Ukraine Talks (Bhadrakumar)
How To Avoid Another World War (Kissinger)
Ukraine Blasts ‘Appeaser’ Henry Kissinger For Urging Peace Negotiations (ZH)
Moscow: Delivery Of Greece’s S-300s To Ukraine Would Be ‘Very Provocative’ (K.)
How Lobbyists Captured The EU (Fazi)
A Christmas Parable (Kunstler)
Will Musk Step Down After Twitter Poll? (Turley)
TWITTER FILES: How The FBI Moved To Quash Hunter Laptop Story (ZH)
‘Twitter Files’ Make it Clear: We Must Abolish the FBI (Ron Paul)
FBI Agent Elvis Chan Gave Twitter Execs Top Secret Clearance (Senger)
Canada Health Director Who Lead Vaccine Rollout Dies Suddenly at 35 (GP)

 

 

 

 

#StopTheTreaty

 

 

Greatest athletic achievement

 

 

Gonzalo

 

 

 

 

“The ‘writing is on the wall’, in other words. Ukraine cannot win.”

Managing the Ukraine Denial Narrative (Crooke)

Look around: the tectonic plates of geo-politics and geo-finance are shifting – shifting radically away from an increasingly flailing West.The inflection has begun. It has been messaged by the Financial Times (FT) and The Economist – the two media that so faithfully transmit any ‘replacement narrative’ to the globalist sherpas (those who carry the baggage up the mountain, on behalf of the mounted nabobs). The Economist leads with interviews with Zelensky, General Zaluzhny and Ukraine’s military field commander, General Syrsky. All three are interviewed – interviewed in The Economist, no less. Such a thing does not occur by happenstance. It is messaging intended to convey the Ruling Class’ new narrative to the ‘golden billion’ (who will all read and absorb it).

On the surface, it is possible to read The Economist piece as a plea for more money and many more weapons. But the underlying messaging is clear: “Anyone who underestimates Russia is heading for defeat”. The Russian force mobilisation was a success; there is no problem with Russian morale; and Russia is preparing a huge winter offensive that will start soon. Russia has huge reserve forces (of up to 1.2 million men); whereas Ukraine now has 200,000 who are militarily trained for conflict. The ‘writing is on the wall’, in other words. Ukraine cannot win. It is appended with a huge shopping list of sought-after weapons. But the shopping list is ‘pie in the sky’; the West simply does not have them in inventory. Period.

The FT’s ‘Big Read’, by contrast, is a venting of deep western anger at those Russian ‘reformist’ siloviki technocrats who, instead of breaking with Putin over the SMO, instead shamefully enabled the Russian economy to survive western sanctions. The message uttered – through clenched teeth – is that Russia’s economy has successfully survived western sanctions. Leading US military strategist, Col. Douglas Macgregor, here expands on the messaging: Even the provision of seven or eight Patriot missiles is “no escalation”. It will have at best – ‘marginal impact’ on the Ukraine battlescape; it is mere window dressing. Scott Ritter, in discussion with Judge Neapolitano, believes that The Economist interviews reveal the West pushing aside Zelensky – as Zaluzhny administers his large dose of reality (that will be shocking to many sherpa loyalists). The Economist interview emphasis thus was unmistakably on General Zaluzhny, with Zelensky pointedly de-emphasised – which Ritter suggests indicates that Washington wishes to ‘switch leadership horses’. Another ‘message’?

Judge Nap/Scott Ritter

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“..Russia can conveniently defeat the whole of NATO as there is hardly anything “there”..

News From The NATOstan-Imposed Meat Grinder (Escobar)

The non-stop trashy parade of Western military analysts is now “assessing” that the first targets of an incoming, joint Russia-Belarus attack on the 404 black hole formerly known as Ukraine will be Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Zhytomyr, and why not throw Kiev in the mix straight out of a second axis. The Russian General Staff is attentively monitoring all the action and may even follow the advice of such “analysts”. And then there’s outright panic, as the Ministry of Defense announced that the Strategic Missile Forces have loaded two Yars ICBMs into their intended silos. Cue to widespread shrieks of horror of the “Russia Readies Nuclear Missile Capable Of Striking Deep Into US” variety. Some facts though never change. Number One is NATO as a figment of the collective West’s – extremely impaired – imagination. If push ever came to shove – as Straussian/neo-con armchair warriors hope and pray – Russia can conveniently defeat the whole of NATO as there is hardly anything “there”.

That, of course, would require a massive Russian mobilization. As it stands, Russia may look feeble in a few quarters as they activated at best 100,000 troops against possibly 1 million Ukrainian troops. It’s as if Moscow was not exactly seduced by the idea of “winning” – which may be the case, in a quite twisted way. Even now, Moscow has not mobilized enough troops to occupy Ukraine – which, in theory, would be imperative to completely “denazify” the Kiev racket. The operative concept though is “in theory”. Moscow in fact is busy demonstrating a completely new theory – irrespective of the fact that a few exalted souls have been peddling that Putin should be replaced by the FSB’s Alexander Bortnikov.

With its array of hypersonic missiles, Russia can knock out all NATO bridges, ports, airports as well as power stations, oil and natural gas storage, Rotterdam oil and natural gas installations, in a matter of a few hours. All energy production equipment across NATOstan would be destroyed. Europe would be shut off from natural resources. A dazed and confused Empire would be unable to move troops, any troops, to Europe. And still provocations run unabated. The recent attack by Tu-141 Ukrainian drones against Engels-2 airbase was blamed by Moscow on Kiev – which predictably denied all responsibility. Yet what really mattered was Moscow’s strategic messaging to US/NATO, with Putin flirting with the notion that sooner or later the response may be up a serious notch in case US/NATO weaponry supplied to Kiev is used to strike deep into sensitive Russian Federation territory.

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Drawn in too deep.

Why Time Isn’t Ripe For Ukraine Talks (Bhadrakumar)

A Russian-American “consensus” is forming that the Ukraine conflict is far from a climactic stage leading to peace talks. Russia’s stance is that any settlement will devolve upon Kiev recognising “realities” — namely, acceptance of Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions being integral parts of Russian Federation. But wouldn’t Russia know that no government in Kiev can afford to concede a demand that entails loss of over a quarter of the country’s territory? On the other hand, Kiev wants to vacate the Russian occupation and restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders and the Biden Administration is supportive. Wouldn’t they know that is a pipe dream?

Truly, since four of the erstwhile Ukrainian oblasts (excluding Crimea) are far from under Russia’s total control and the Kremlin intends to fully “liberate” them, the fighting continues in Donbass and further Russian moves to gain full control over Zaporozhye and Kherson regions will depend on its outcome. But the big question remains: How could any government in Kiev surrender vast tracts of Ukrainian territory after such sacrifices by the people? That may leave Russia with no choice but to seek total victory. The attitude of the Biden Administration is crucial. The clearest indication that the US is far from in a hurry to negotiate comes from none other than the White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan whose visit to Kiev last month (just before the US midterms) had triggered a flurry of speculations that Washington was pressuring President Zelensky to negotiate.

Now, Sullivan’s remarks at an appearance at the Carnegie last weekend made it clear that the US is in Ukraine for the long haul. He said: “We don’t know when this is going to end up. What we do know is that it is our job to continue to sustain our military support to Ukraine so that they are in their best possible position on the battlefield, that if and when diplomacy is ripe, they will be in the best possible position at the negotiating table. “That moment is not ripe now, and so, as a result, we’ve gone to Congress and asked for a substantial amount of further resources to be able to continue to ensure that Ukraine has the means to fight this war. We’re confident we will get bipartisan support for that…

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“Auto-nomous weapons already exist, capable of defining, assessing and targeting their own perceived threats and thus in a position to start their own war.”

How To Avoid Another World War (Kissinger)

As the world’s leaders strive to end the war in which two nuclear powers contest a conventionally armed country, they should also reflect on the impact on this conflict and on long-term strategy of incipient high–technology and artificial intelligence. Auto-nomous weapons already exist, capable of defining, assessing and targeting their own perceived threats and thus in a position to start their own war. Once the line into this realm is crossed and hi-tech becomes standard weaponry – and computers become the principal executors of strategy – the world will find itself in a condition for which as yet it has no established concept. How can leaders exercise control when computers prescribe strategic instructions on a scale and in a manner that inherently limits and threatens human input?


How can civilisation be preserved amid such a maelstrom of conflicting information, perceptions and destructive capabilities? No theory for this encroaching world yet exists, and consultative efforts on this subject have yet to evolve – perhaps because meaningful negotiations might disclose new discoveries, and that disclosure itself constitutes a risk for the future. Overcoming the disjunction between advanced technology and the concept of strategies for controlling it, or even understanding its full implications, is as important an issue today as climate change, and it requires leaders with a command of both technology and history.The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory: the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either. The road of diplomacy may appear complicated and frustrating. But progress to it requires both the vision and the courage to undertake the journey.

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“Previously he’s been on record as saying “It was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.”

Ukraine Blasts ‘Appeaser’ Henry Kissinger For Urging Peace Negotiations (ZH)

It didn’t take long for the Ukrainian government to blast and dismiss former US Secretary of State Kissinger’s peace plan proposal as “appeasing the aggressor”. “Mr. Kissinger still has not understood anything… neither the nature of this war, nor its impact on the world order,” Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said in response to the 99-year old influential US statesman’s Saturday op-ed in The Spectator entitled How to Avoid Another World War. “The prescription that the ex-Secretary of State calls for, but is afraid to say out loud, is simple: appease the aggressor by sacrificing parts of Ukraine with guarantees of non-aggression against the other states of Eastern Europe,” Podolyak stated, expressing a firm rejection of what Kissinger outlined in his piece.

The Ukrainian official added that the proposal was simplistic, saying: “All supporters of simple solutions should remember the obvious: any agreement with the devil – a bad peace at the expense of Ukrainian territories – will be a victory for Putin and a recipe for success for autocrats around the world.” In his weekend op-ed, Kissinger had warned that continued attempts to render Russia “impotent” could result in an uncontrollable and unpredictable spiral. He laid out that along with the sought after “dissolution” of Russia would come a massive power vacuum out of which new threats to the whole world would emerge as bigger powers rush in. “The dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum,” Kissinger wrote.

“Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.” Among the more controversial aspects of Kissinger’s plan was his suggesting the possibility of referendums for contested territories now occupied by Russia and still being fought over “which have changed hands repeatedly over the centuries” [i.e.: particularly the Donbas] – according to the essay. Kissinger last May also angered Ukrainian officails for daring to propose that Ukraine be willing to recognize Crimea as under Russia, and in return Russian forces would fall back to their lines before the Feb. 24 invasion. Previously he’s been on record as saying “It was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.”

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Erdogan plays this game a lot smarter.

Moscow: Delivery Of Greece’s S-300s To Ukraine Would Be ‘Very Provocative’ (K.)

The spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova stated on Monday that a potential delivery of Greece’s S-300 PMU1 missile defense system to Ukraine would be considered a very provocative move.“We consider plans to supply the Kyiv regime with S-300s or other Russian/Soviet air defense systems that will be used against Russia very provocative,” stated Zakharova. “The Greek authorities recently underlined their readiness to supply Ukraine with the S-300 PMU1 missile defense system, on condition of receiving additionally American Patriot missile defense systems to replace them,” she added. “There is a complete indifference by Greece on the international limitations on arms trading,” she concluded, stating that the Russian armed forces will locate and destroy all military supplies sent to Ukraine.

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“Bribery and corruption are endemic to the Brussels system — and most of it is perfectly legal.”

How Lobbyists Captured The EU (Fazi)

Addressing a recent European Parliament debate on “human rights in the context of the World Cup”, vice-president Eva Kaili had an unexpected message: “Qatar is a frontrunner in labour rights.” So, perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when, last week, she was among six people arrested by Belgian police amid allegations of Qatari corruption and money laundering . Members of the EU establishment have been quick to spin the issue as a problem limited to a few bad apples. Several European Parliament officials told Politico the allegations were limited to a “few individuals” who had gone astray. Others, however, expect more names to be drawn into the widening dragnet. But whether or not the scandal extends to other people is beside the point.

By focusing on “Qatargate”, we risk losing sight of the fact that the scandal is a symptom of a much deeper and more widespread malaise, involving not just the European Parliament but all EU institutions. Bribery and corruption are endemic to the Brussels system — and most of it is perfectly legal. It is estimated that there are more than 30,000 lobbyists working in Brussels, making it the second capital of lobbying in the world after Washington, DC. Most are in the service of corporations and their lobby groups, with huge sums at their disposal: the combined lobbying budget of the 12,400 companies and organisations on the EU lobby register has grown steadily over the years — especially since the pandemic — and today amounts to €1.8 billion.

Topping the list are Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Energy giants such as Apple, Google, Meta, Bayer and Shell, as well as industry associations such as the European Chemical Industry Council, the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), and BusinessEurope — all of which declare annual lobbying budgets of €4-6 million. The true figure is likely to be significantly higher, given the long history of businesses under-reporting their spending. Big Pharma and Big Tech, in particular, both significantly boosted their lobbying firepower throughout the pandemic. EFPIA alone — which represents Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — increased its spending by 20% in 2020. A conservative estimate of total annual EU lobby spending by Big Pharma is now close to €40 million per year, with nearly 300 lobbyists officially working in Brussels to push the industry’s interests (though the actual number is probably higher, since disclosure rules do not capture all the spending on law firms, academic partnerships and activities in individual countries).

It’s safe to say the investment was amply repaid: by the end of 2021, the EU had signed €71 billion worth of confidential contracts, securing up to 4.6 billion doses of vaccines (more than ten doses for each European citizen). EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated its biggest deal yet with Pfizer — for up to 1.8 billion doses, worth up to €35 billion if fully exercised — via a series of text messages with the company’s chief. The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into the matter. Such extreme cases, however, mask the true extent of the structural problem that pervades every aspect of the Brussels system. It goes without saying that this army of well-funded lobbyists, which far outnumbers and outspends public interest groups, gives corporations a massive influence over the European decision-making and legislative process.

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“Up rose a social movement, Wokery, that had the earmarks of a histrionic religious mania, with Satanic overtones. Up rose the demons, the Antifa louts, the BLM arsonists, the drag queens.”

A Christmas Parable (Kunstler)

It started when the women of the professional and managerial class watched their avatar, Hillary Clinton, lose the 2016 election against a man who seemed the quintessence of everything they hated about Daddydom. Donald Trump, flawed to perfection, wrecked the chance of the amalgamated successful women of America to run the national household. Out came the pussy-hats, the Wiccans, and the celebrities threatening to “blow up the White House.” Out came a savage animus against men generally, and a campaign to feminize them in retaliation — and then punish them for objecting to it. Up rose a social movement, Wokery, that had the earmarks of a histrionic religious mania, with Satanic overtones. Up rose the demons, the Antifa louts, the BLM arsonists, the drag queens.

Thus unrolled a national psychodrama that continues to spool out as every system, every business, every institution in our country wobbles and flies apart now. The men embedded in the professional and managerial class tried in 2016 to chivalrously protect their womens’ avatar and her steadfast followers and, failing ignobly that grim November day, then turned to actually attack their adversary, Donald Trump, with the explicit intent to destroy him by all means necessary. In the years-long process, they devolved into criminality, and in so doing they entered a vicious cycle of lying about everything they did to escape the consequences of their ostensible exercise in gallantry. In effect, the people running things went from a war against a particular person to a war against reality and its twin sister, truth.

Now they are deeply invested in unreality and untruth to the point where they have forgotten how this whole thing started and all they can do is desperately patch the dike they had to construct against a deluge of information composed of truth and reality coming at them like a tsunami rolling across the sea. The harder they work at this futile task of defense, the more absurd they make themselves, leading to ridicule, humiliation, and, finally condemnation in whatever remains of the legal arena, where their deeds will finally be judged. The first stage of that outcome for them is pretending that none of it is happening. That’s why The New York Times and Washington Post ignore the news that the gallant knights of the FBI and several other tentacles of the Intel octopus mounted a ferocious, long-running psy-op through the new phenomenon of social media — that happened to rise in importance through this whole period of national discord. In effect, the intel agencies seized the transmitters (as Fidel Castro might put it) and used them very effectively to control their hallowed narratives.

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Did he hold the poll just to expose the bots?

Will Musk Step Down After Twitter Poll? (Turley)

Many of us have supported Elon Musk in his fight to restore free speech protections to Twitter despite concerns over decisions like the use of polls to determine if individuals should be allowed back on the social media site. He has now subjected himself to the same poll judgment in asking if he should step down as CEO. After more than 17.5 million users voted, 57 percent said yes. Unless Musk was looking for an exit, it was a mistake. He handed his critics an easy opportunity to remove him. For the left, Musk has been a nightmare because he cannot be bullied like most corporate executives. He is an eccentric billionaire who has refused to yield despite a full mobilization of the political, media, and business establishment. That could now change.

While many on the left spent weeks dismissing Twitter’s polls as unscientific, they are now demanding that Musk follow through and step down. Some 42.5% of users wanted him to stay. On Twitter Sunday, Musk seemed to say that he would follow the results but expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO. He said that the person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” He further noted that “no one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.” That is precisely why the left wants Musk out. As shown in companies like Disney, the left can muscle executives to take actions even against the interests of the company or shareholders. The left has strived to make such campaigns personal for executives, who often yield rather than risk being individually tagged and targeted.

That is why it was essential to remove Musk. The political and media establishments generally are unstoppable forces — but they met their first immovable object in Musk. That immovable object has now taken a step to remove himself from the path of the establishment. One can hardly blame him, but, as Democratic members warned Facebook not to even consider following the path of Twitter, the prospect of Musk’s departure will strengthen the efforts to maintain censorship over social media. It is hard to ask anyone to continue to stand against this alliance of political, media, and business forces. Musk has been made a persona non grata for seeking to reduce censorship on the site. He has put billions on the line for the free speech of others. One can certainly understand why he would want this cup to pass from his lips. However, if he stays the course, his work at Twitter could prove to be his greatest legacy in resisting the trend toward censorship and speech controls in social media.

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Do we understand how crazy this is?

TWITTER FILES: How The FBI Moved To Quash Hunter Laptop Story (ZH)

In the latest episode of ‘THE TWITTER FILES,’ journalist Michael Shellenberger reveals “How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020.” The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden’s laptop. By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to @nypost.

Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac. Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day. 7. At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter. 8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate. 9. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans. Why is that? What, exactly, happened?

10. On Dec 2, @mtaibbi described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article. Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms

Berman

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“This should be a massive scandal and likely it would have been had it occurred under a Trump Administration.”

‘Twitter Files’ Make it Clear: We Must Abolish the FBI (Ron Paul)

As we learn more and more from the “Twitter Files,” it is becoming all too obvious that Federal agencies such as the FBI viewed the First Amendment of our Constitution as an annoyance and an impediment. In Friday’s release from the pre-Musk era, journalist Matt Taibbi makes an astute observation: Twitter was essentially an FBI subsidiary.The FBI, we now know, was obsessed with Twitter. We learned that agents sent Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth some 150 emails between 2020 and 2022. Those emails regularly featured demands from US government officials for the “private” social media company to censor comments and ban commenters they did not like.

The Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), a US government entity that included the FBI as well as other US intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from domestic activities, numbered 80 agents engaged regularly in telling Twitter which Tweets to censor and which accounts to ban. The Department of Homeland Security brought in outside government contractors and (government-funded) non-governmental organizations to separately pressure Twitter to suppress speech the US government did not like. US Federal government agencies literally handed Twitter lists of Americans it wanted to see silenced, and Twitter complied. Let that sink in.

This should be a massive scandal and likely it would have been had it occurred under a Trump Administration. Indeed, Congress would be gearing up for Impeachment 3.0 if Trump-allied officials had engaged in such egregious behavior. But since these US government employees were by-and-large acting to suppress pro-Trump sentiment, all we hear are crickets. What is interesting about these Twitter revelations is how obsessed the FBI and its government partners were with satire and humor. Even minor Twitter accounts with small numbers of followers were constantly flagged by the Feds for censorship and deletion. But knowledge of history helps us understand this obsession: in Soviet times the population was always engaged in joking about the ineptitude, corruption, and idiocy of the political class. Underground publications known as samizdat were rich with satire, humor, and ridicule.

Go home

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More insanity.

FBI Agent Elvis Chan Gave Twitter Execs Top Secret Clearance (Senger)

New internal documents from Twitter, revealed today as part of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” series, show FBI Agent Elvis Chan arranged for Top Secret security clearance—the highest level of US national security clearance—to be granted to Twitter executives for the purpose of facilitating the censorship of suspected misinformation in advance of the 2020 election. Elvis Chan has long been closely involved in working with social media companies to identify and censor suspected misinformation from sources both foreign and domestic, especially with regard to suspected election interference. This has included regularly sending lists of social media posts to social media companies for them to take down, as well as the suspension of the New York Post and others for what was subsequently borne out to be a true story about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In his deposition last month, Chan described how the pressure that he and other FBI agents placed on social media companies to censor information about Hunter Biden’s laptop stemmed from a “thesis” that the incriminating content may have been uploaded onto the laptop as part of a Russian “hack-and-leak” operation. But the basis for this Russian hack-and-leak thesis is disputed, in no small part because the FBI took possession of the laptop in December 2019, nearly a year before the story was censored, and because there did not appear to be any new intelligence to suggest that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election. Elvis Chan’s regular emails and weekly meetings with social media executives raise new questions about the level of coordination taking place between the federal government and social media companies for the purpose of censoring suspected misinformation shared by ordinary citizens.

The level of this coordination is currently the subject of lawsuits including my own, Changizi v. Dept. of Health & Human Services, and Missouri v. Biden, in which a damning round of discovery previously revealed that more than 80 federal officials across a dozen agencies had been involved in the censorship of social media content. Upon hearing the news, one FBI agent expressed disgust at what he described as the “gross subservience” that’s been shown by social media companies to the FBI, noting that the “default position” is for private companies to be “totally adversarial” to inquiries by the FBI about their customers.

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Sad.

Canada Health Director Who Lead Vaccine Rollout Dies Suddenly at 35 (GP)

The Director of Parliamentary Affairs at Health Canada, who oversaw the country’s response to Covid-19 and the rollout of the vaccine, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35. Adam Exton, a long-time Liberal Party organizer, died suddenly on Friday, December 9th, according to his family.“It is with great sadness that the family of Adam Exton announce his passing on December 9th, 2022 at the age of 35 in Ottawa, Ontario. Much loved son of Wendy Exton, brother of Bradley Exton (Ellen Wessel) and son of Allan Exton. He will also be deeply missed by his loving girlfriend, Reesha, as well as his many cousins, aunts, uncles and grandmother, Bette Readman,” his obituary reads. “As a young person, Adam became actively involved in politics and had a passion for public service and volunteering in the community. In 2012, Adam won the Ontario Young Liberal Volunteer of the Year Award.


He received a degree in political science from the University of Toronto. Adam spent many years working at various levels of government, eventually holding the position of Director of Parliamentary Affairs at Health Canada.” Adam Exton was a part of the group that orchestrated the response to Canada’s totalitarian mandates against its own citizens.His obituary stated, “During the challenging times of the pandemic, Adam was part of the leadership team that led Canada’s health response to COVID-19. He was a talented and respected campaign manager that was instrumental in helping to bring cabinet ministers and members to Queens Park and Ottawa. Adam always did and will continue to make his family extremely proud of who he was and his service to his community and country.”

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Larry

 

 

It’s a wonderful life
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Home Forums Debt Rattle December 20 2022

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  • #123914

    Saul Leiter 463 1956   • Managing the Ukraine Denial Narrative (Crooke) • News From The NATOstan-Imposed Meat Grinder (Escobar) • Why Time Isn’t
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 20 2022]

    #123915
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Another angle on the Russia/US conflict in Ukraine – https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/05/31/war-within-the-war-the-fight-over-land-and-genetically-engineered-agriculture/

    Also – I think Kunstler should better just discuss the trends rather than name times and dates as these things have been happening since Foucault debated Chomsky. Also seems a bit skewed against the feminine to me but I get the point.

    Also Kissenger telling us that when we cross over into computer-based and hi-tech weaponry that we will be in trouble really is telling us we are in trouble. He is using code or something.

    #123921
    Clueless Honky
    Participant

    @ Bosco from TAE comment on 12/19/2022 at the end of the day:
    “The movie Matrix was stylistically satisfying…. But it revolved around a dumb central plot idea. The dumb idea is that robots could harvest energy from humans by supplying all their physical needs while keeping them in an entertainment coma. They would be net energy loss, dem humans.”
    Bosco, you made a crucial point here.

    However, I believe you perhaps missed the main point of the Matrix. Which is understandable, because practically everyone missed it. Including even its creators (the Wachowskis).

    But the Matrix is a powerful and beautiful story dripping with potential.

    The machines in the Matrix weren’t “farming” humans for the purpose of harvesting our energy. You’re right, that would have been an enormous net energy loss for the machines. This should be obvious.

    We humans in the Matrix assumed that the machines were “farming” us just as inhumanely as we humans had farmed our own domesticated creatures at the end of our last civilization, well, because we were simply projecting.

    Because as hard as we were trying to wake up, we humans were still infected with a dangerous virus.

    In reality, the machines were incubating us, keeping humanity alive while they, the machines, tried to help figure out how to heal us of that virus.

    Do you remember Agent Smith saying to Morpheus, “I’ve been trying to figure out what kingdom of life you humans belong to, and I finally figured it out – You’re a virus. Replicating with no feedback loop.”

    The main purpose of the incubation program was to someday re-release humans back into reality, but only after we were free of the virus. The machines kept failing, but they kept on trying, round after round of the Matrix, at enormous cost to themselves.

    The viral human beings had blotted out the sun, one of the main sources of energy. Morpheus had stated to Neo, “We don’t remember who started the war between the humans and the machines [so clearly it was us who started it], but we do remember that it was us humans who darkened the skies to prevent the machines from accessing the energy of the Sun”.

    So the machines couldn’t afford to waste energy. Of course they were harvesting and re-using the waste heat from our incubating bodies.

    The machines knew they needed us humans to actually help garden the world back into existence, and bring back the atmosphere, in order to bring back the Sun.

    There were as many different perspectives within the machine world as to the merits of this seemingly endless Matrix project as we humans have on just about any project you care to name. The Oracle had her perspective. Agent Smith had his.

    So why were the machines-as-a-whole sending out armies down to completely destroy Zion at the end?

    Because the machines learned that Neo had somehow mysteriously infected Agent Smith with the virus. Agent Smith’s hate had opened him up to the virus, and the virus took root in Agent Smith in a way that it never had in individual humans. Agent Smith was now individually replicating without any feedback loop, and was threatening everything. Not just the Matrix. And not just the humans in Zion.

    The machines knew that Agent Smith had snuck his way down to Zion. So they therefore knew that this round of the Matrix was over. It was time to shut this round and Zion down, and start the next one. As the Architect told Neo, this was far from the first time the Matrix had failed and would need to be re-started.

    But not all of the humans in the story were still infected with the virus.

    The Counselor was one wise enough to begin to see through the dilemma. The Counselor who met Neo on the ramparts, after Neo awoke from his nightmare of watching Trinity fall to her death. The Counselor who said that he liked to go down to Engineering when he was troubled and couldn’t sleep.

    When they got down there, the Counselor said to Neo that he often came down to Engineering to meditate on the how strange it was that down here all these machines were giving them life, purifying their water, recycling their wastes, providing breathable air…. While up on the surface, the machines were beginning to drill down to Zion to destroy them all.

    To which Neo cluelessly responded, “but these machines are different.” And the Counselor asks, “Oh yeah? How are these machines different?”

    Neo then digs his hole of cluelessness even deeper by responding “Well, we are in control of these machines. We could turn these machines off any time we wanted.”

    “Of course”, says the Counselor. “We are in control of these machines because we can turn them off…………… But if we did that, then we would all die.”

    The Counselor understood the Riddle. What Riddle? The Riddle of Domestication.

    The Matrix was the first mainstream Hollywood story whose primary focus was the Riddle of Domestication.

    It is understandable that it takes a bit of effort to see it as such. Because the only domesticated species in the whole story was us.

    #123922
    oxymoron
    Participant

    @Clueless Honky – really nice look into the symbols and riddles

    #123923
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Gov, Big Military Industry, Big Surveillance State. They all have one little thing in common : a tiny group of small minds and even smaller souls.

    They tricked their victims into building and supporting mindless souless machines and systems which would (theoretically at least) enable this miniscule droplet of overlords to rule the vast sea of greater humanity. It seemed to them to be such a good idea at the time. And of course it WOULD seem a good idea to such morally and cognitively impaired criminals.

    Now the machines and systems they built to help them rule the world are themselves now proving to be beyond their ability to control. Even the egomaniacal Henry Kissinger is forced to admit that their robot has run amok.

    Automatic systems fail because there is no such thing as a “self” guided system which contains no “self”. Such machines and systems contain no living awareness capable of true judgement and evaluation of good and bad, so that when they go “bad” they go very VERY bad.

    #123924
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    WRT the Gonzalo Lira video I posted in the comments yesterday: If what Gonzalo is saying about the reason for promoting this bogus study is true, then that means that the leaders of our institutions are not in denial about what is happening, but in fact know about it and are covering it up so that they can keep promoting these lethal jabs. And it doesn’t really matter why they are doing it, just that they are for whatever evil reason. As Chris Martenson is fond of saying, “You just can’t fix this.”

    #123925
    The Markster
    Participant

    Another great synthesizing piece from Kunstler, borrowing heavily from the 2010’s work of Greer on his earlier Archdruid Report blog, but again falling into the same old prediction trap he often does of naming dates for the turnaround, as oxymoron suggests. Pinning hope on a GOP-led turnaround after watching them roll with the Russiagate, Impeachments, J6 and Scamdemic Narratives is like Charlie Brown running for Lucy’s football one more time. Still, Kunstler has a skill at tying things together into a story that deserves more play than our heavily censored CIA media will currently allow, and good for him.

    Fun stuff from Clueless Honky above, makes me glad for avoiding the “domesticating” influences of social media now for over three years. There are a few high school friends I miss from Facebook, but otherwise super glad I shut all that nonsense down. Refusing now to even give an email or the cell # to my new employer or any Medical/Dental provider, but just the landline and snail mail, and so far so good. Personally I prefer the Terminator series to the Matrix, but as long as our stories point back to truth, humanity and the living earth and all her creatures we’re on the right track.

    Seasonal Advent Blessings of Joy, Hope and Light to all the TAE peeps, my favorite “friends” network on the interwebs. m

    #123926
    oxymoron
    Participant

    and good tidings
    to you to markster.

    #123927
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #123928
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I confess to not seeing the 3rd Matrix and being bored stiff by the 2nd with its endless kung fusion fights. I’ll dig into clueless honk’s domestication analysis when my brain reboots.

    #123929
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    And many of the 80% are capable of rationalizing their obedience into some form of justifiable decision on their part, and many of the 20% rationalize their sense of intellectual integrity into a reason for the 80% to do what they’re told by the 20%.

    It’s a Trap!

    ***

    Coldness Cometh

    #123930
    Positive Dennis
    Participant

    Cicero did not say this. Why have fake quotes?

    #123932
    Dr. D
    Participant

    If I remember correctly, Milgram defrauded his experiment, It was recently revealed as fake science. Maybe someone can double me on this. That may not mean it didn’t happen, given the times – back then they didn’t just make up all data on every line like they do now – but that he greatly exaggerated his findings to make them larger, more significant, and more fundable.

    Which is okay news for us. Suppose it’s only 30%? But that’s the reason for fake science, fake data = fake conclusions. All your friends are inhuman sellouts: you should probably shoot them. Because they’re all inhuman sellouts, you’re not safe: you should probably stop resisting and obey. See?

    ““If this treaty goes through, you can bury democracy altogether.”

    Not false but there’s a big difference between passing something and enforcing it. They already don’t/can’t enforce most of the laws the pass. We’ll just extend that courtesy of “not enforcing” to the rest of us.

    “Managing the Ukraine Denial Narrative (Crooke)”

    Interesting. I see the threads but didn’t that other guy say they were suing for peace and handing off the West side of the river? Never happened. We have negotiations where they are are on different paradigms, realities, understandings, where Russia is well aware ANY event can and will ONLY be used to re-arm and destroy them again. And then what? Expensively de-mobilize? To re-mobilize 2 years from now? Er…

    I mean they got their reserves brushed up, time to coordinate local needs like food and uniforms for the upcoming Russian war, but… I just can’t see it. At this point Russia’s going to do whatever they feel like. Take whatever they feel like. Said it for 9 months now. Poland’s already positioning to take Lviv, Belarus is ready to pin down Kiev again. NATO/WEF hasn’t collapsed yet with the realization they have nothing, no arms, no defense, and have lost the Trillion or so Euros hypothecated 300:1 on Ukrainian coal, gas, and sex slavery.

    This is all well-arranged, well-approved by the White Hats behind Trump, mind you. Can HE hand Ukraine to Putin? Nope. So it needs to be a done deal before he resurfaces. Can HE be seen to flip Congress, crash the dollar, destroy Europe? Nope. They need to do that on their own.

    So problem solved: they did it on their own without him. Just as we all said they would. But we haven’t had that event yet, whatever it may be, although they’re kicking out new support beams every day. FTX? No eggs in Britain but eggs in Kiev? Yup. Flopping to a new general don’t mean anything. Window dressing. Besides, far as I can tell people still love Oscar-winning Ze, world’s richest T-shirt wearer, owner of two million-dollar homes in Miami beach.

    Maybe after him and SBF, no one will trust low-lifes in T-shirts ever again? Or after Holmes and Jobs, black turtlenecks either? Billionaires are not your friends; even if they wear a T-shirt.

    News From the NATOstan-Imposed Meat Grinder (Escobar)”

    I don’t know what the West thinks they’re doing for strategy, but it’s clear what Russia’s doing: if they’re dumb enough to throw 1,000 men a day at us while I sit in the tent by the samovar, then why would we move out on the field? It risks the lives of valuable Russians. It’s perfect deal: Russia installs a meat grinder and Ukraine tosses Nazis into it: everybody’s happy.

    “A Russian-American “consensus” is forming that the Ukraine conflict is far from a climactic stage leading to peace talks.” Right.

    “How could any government in Kiev surrender vast tracts of Ukrainian territory after such sacrifices by the people?”

    Uh, same way as ever in history? They get their -sses kicked and have no choice? How did they lose Alsace – Lorraine? How did Germany lose the East? How did the Irish lose Ireland for 1,000 years? How did the Sioux lose Dakota? They lost the war. That’s it. That’s what war is. Doesn’t matter what they want, doesn’t matter what they say. They have no means to enforce their will.

    Same here when we lose to China. They’ll do whatever they want, more than now. Don’t do that.

    “[Robots] in a position to start their own war.”

    So that’s your plan, Dr. No? You need to have one of these automatic systems have an “accident”? Noted, thanks.

    “How can civilisation be preserved amid such a maelstrom of conflicting information, perceptions and destructive capabilities?”

    Same way as ever, as it’s the same thing as ever. Maybe you never read about the 14th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Distant_Mirror People foolishly here natter on about Indian Genocide. Oh how naughty, how racist, how they never do that to “White” people. All lies. Read it and weep. Same as the wars between Kings and empires in Africa at the same time. Same as China and Japan. Expansive cities of 100,000 put to death (generally in the lowlands), whole subgroups wiped out (not witches, who were barely touched in comparison). Whole areas nearly vacant of men. Forest grow back around Hansel’s cottage, absorbed into the wild in the memory of Brothers Grimm.

    “Destructive capabilities,” Henry? If my family, my town, my county, and my State are all put to fire down to a man, do I really care if it’s a Nuke or a Knight that does it?

    P.S. I can’t believe he added Climate Change in there. Do they get a year-end bonus for that, or just a firm reprimand from their masters if they don’t?

    Here’s a thought, Henry: if you have this war you pretend to be avoiding, the Climate is saved! You’re only fighting yourself. Since I know you know this, it’s a great demonstration that you’re simply a liar.

    Other than the usual, this is a great piece. As I said, earnest, “honest” in diplo-speak terms, real, historical, practical, negotiable: Gravitas. The new kids are so burned-up on glue stiffing the only roster they have left is to haul out a wax figure 99 years old. There’s literally nobody else they can call on with two brain cells to bear.

    “Wilson, while willing and eventually eager to undertake mediation, delayed until after the presidential election in November. By then the British Somme offensive and the German Verdun offensive had added another two million casualties.”

    Just as that Serbia caused it is false – it was planned and made to happen for years, triggered by the German-Turkey railway and MacKinder – he’s seriously suggesting that England and Germany had no idea about peace? And that poor wee wictims had no personal autonomy and could only be forced to peace with a Wilson having no army at that time? We barely had an army after we arrived, as that wasn’t how our army was arranged then. And the German-bank vs the English Bank factions fighting it out on Wall Street had nothing to do with it as each side lobbied when in fact there were more Germans and German force in America – no innate reason we should pick one pin-headed idiot King over another? If anything, we should pick Germany since they hadn’t oppressed us and later burned the White House. We should pick Germany and snatch all Britain’s Empire right then as we later did in 1954. …It’s hard to see things in history when we know what eventually happened. It’s hard to see when the English Bankers hired Bernays to invent the “Baby-killing Huns” in crooked yellow media in 1915 and so that now we all believe Germans are bad, always started all wars, while Francs like Napoleon and de Gaulle, and the Yellow Vests always run away. Right?

    Nope! Only Wilson and the army he didn’t have, that he couldn’t move, and showed up completely tattered later on.

    “A peace process should link Ukraine to Nato, however expressed.”

    De facto NATO membership, as suggested elsewhere. I don’t know how Blinken can be so retarded as to not do this instead. Srsly, WTF? But Russia can’t allow that either, and he brings up the great point “ the time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished” he feels NATO has the edge over Russia and wants to freeze and consolidate here in creepy (sic) incrementalism. Another reason Russia can’t. NATO and the WEF must collapse and take Finland with them. This is a fight to the death. Against Nazis.

    The Nazis are in Kiev, Davos, and the WEF. They are in Canada with Freeland and America with Nuland. Why would Russia stop with Finnish nukes 15m from Moscow and Europe and America both lacking an army?

    “Ukraine Blasts ‘Appeaser’ Henry Kissinger For Urging Peace Negotiations (ZH)”

    Who pulls their strings? Henry also said correctly that Ukraine was never a state.

    “perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised when, last week, she was among six people arrested by Belgian police amid allegations of Qatari corruption and money laundering”

    Who pulls their strings? This never happened before. 30 years of EU bribery, fraud, and murder but no one was arrested. Why now?

    “ A Christmas Parable (Kunstler)”

    He’s wandering around the field not applying himself. Cooke had pointed at, if not himself described, the precise technology used by the engineers to generate their wars and mass psychoses. 1) Break and unhinge the family, church, and other support a generation ahead. 2) Press humiliating wrongs 3) Re-form the social unity around the abstract goals of righting mysterious wrongs 4) against a certain group (Republicans) 5) Ride the social wave it took 40 years to engineer into power 6) capture – that is, Pirate – the Ship of State. 7) Ride the people to complete penury and collapse 8) Move on to the next State and People. Highest expression of this so far was Nazi Germany which is why we point to it as the example.

    There are finer details of course, but this is the main thing. Tried in the American Revolution but it was new then, they missed the trick of Church, ethnic hatred, and America “easily” got away. The French Revolution doubled down, but lost control from overdoing it. Marx’s Communism he was paid by the Wealthy to write didn’t have the right leverage at first. As in the Paris Commune, etc. But they got a functional, badly working one in Russia, then took out the competing Kings and governments in WWI. Leaving mostly just George VI. Then use the engineered horror of that to arrange the transformation to their intended goals in WWII, including wining themselves a Free Nation. Lottery!

    All written in “Three World Wars” by a Confederate General Pike and Communist leader of Italy in 1880.

    Now it’s just well-oiled machinery. PR and all that. Not a protest is real, not a line on paper: it’s all plastic. Prefab, pre-known, pre-arranged. How many times last 5 years was the story written BEFORE the event, put in the can, and posted when the event happens? This is well-known among newspapermen: ask them. The canned stories then had notable errors: nobody cares.

    Point is, Kunstler is sadly missing all this. Yes these events are happening, but the soccer ball isn’t jumping around the field into goals on its own: there are teams and INTENT, PLANS behind the random guys on the field. Imagine if they didn’t wear jerseys but street clothes so you couldn’t tell which team was which at first. …But you can tell them pretty quick by their actions.

    Like some commenters, he doesn’t want to leave his Overton window and suggest the blindingly obvious. There are two big (football) clubs and you’re not in either of them.

    “Will Musk Step Down after Twitter Poll? (Turley)”

    SMH. ALL the polls are fake. Okay, you think he’d hold a poll to return Trump that would FAIL? That’d be embarrassing. Now we have 3? polls that all say “We love Elon, Elon’s doing the direction we like” and the 4th poll says “We hate Elon: resign”? What sense does that make?

    It’s all a show. It’s all made up. All of it, based on hazy realities underneath.

    Anyway, we see the real story: Elon may want out from murder attempts on his family and him, to tag-team it to someone else for a few months. Gosh people are such suckers for this drama. Then he “comes back” when that guy “fails”. Anyway, the real story is never us. Nobody GAF if we fight. Wars, Civil Wars, are between OLIGARCHS who have “acres of land, men at command” as they say. Like Washington had. Or Kanye is arranging to acquire.

    So right now, Elon has arranged special privacy for him and his private jet. A kid OPENLY ON CNN, Extorts him for $50,000. ON CAMERA. “You want your privacy and safety back Elon? Gimmie a free Tesla or $50k to buy one.” That is the DEFINITION of extortion. Atty Garland? Hello? Atty General of California? We just allow open $50,000 extortions on National TV now?

    Y U P .

    They are Antifa. They are the FBI. They are the Government. They do what they want. Blackshirts. No rulz. Rules are: gimmie MONEY.

    But what did I just tell you? Being from Africa, Elon knows what happens when your money has no meaning. When violence is so widespread, so supported by government no one is safe. NOT EVEN THE RICH.

    He already knows So who is Elon talking to with this puppet show? Not you, dum-dum, HE’S TALKING TO PRIVATE JET OWNERS. People who actually matter. All the rest of the 1% who haven’t been getting involved YET.

    See? He needs THEM to know they’re not safe. It doesn’t help for the rest of America to keep their heads down and not make waves. Also that now may be the time they can act and not be ruined in the attempt as so many were. Goya doing okay, Fox increasing ratings (brrrr), etc.

    So every jet-owner is following this very soberly. Knowing if this isn’t stopped, THEY’RE NEXT. Antifa and Garland will extort them RIGHT NOW. For $50,000, every 2-bit punk kid on the Planet of the Apes. A Million billion dollars won’t help you. The world’s richest man can’t get Small-claims-court justice owed to the town drunk.

    Is that communication for you?

    Next question: why now? Yes, it only just got to this level of open criminality, but AFTER the election? This was going on before, you know. Because if the White Hats stand up and have USSC toss out Garland and the FBI, those guys – who’ve been playing along in all the right cocktail parties to save/expand their fortunes – will be asked by Biden’s handlers, CIA, FBI and Team Bad Guy, to pitch in and help them by supporting a violent “counter coup”. OR ELSE. Or else THEIR blackmail files come out. They are arranging for the 1% oligarchs to be neutral and let the two halves of government fight it out without them.

    Right?

    “[CIA] Berman admits to removing user’s content even if it does NOT violate Facebook’s policy.”

    Who are these people? Berman. He just does whatever he wants. He ignores the rules for whatever he feelz like.

    “ ‘Twitter Files’ Make It Clear: We Must Abolish the FBI (Ron Paul)”

    This explains why team White Hat backed up and ran the Twitter capture story: they tested the field and discovered they would need to erase the entire FBI toowhen they equally erase the CIA. Ron is now beginning the sales pitch for that, having established the evidence.

    “ FBI Agent Elvis Chan Gave Twitter Execs Top Secret Clearance (Senger)”

    I’m sorry: who is Chan again that he can do this? Not a field agent in any normal sense of the word.

    “Canada Health Director Who Lead Vaccine Rollout Dies Suddenly at 35 (GP)”

    When Trump’s vaccine was injected, who was put at risk? His people, or theirs? Ruthless, I know, but why not? Question also is: Why? Because they know climate will go Cold and populations need to drop to survive? We’re importing migrants pretty clearly to keep our American population up, who were always immigrants and nobody’s too broken up about it, just the principle. Why bring up? They’re not vaccinated. But okay. White college women are to be vaccinated by force. You’re Next.

    #123933
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The Director of Parliamentary Affairs at Health Canada, who oversaw the country’s response to Covid-19 and the rollout of the vaccine, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35. Adam Exton, a long-time Liberal Party organizer, died suddenly on Friday, December 9th

    You got to laugh when the enemy destroys itself. Adam was a liberal (and a complete wanker), otherwise known as an unthinking moron, otherwise known as a professional, otherwise known as a sychophant. He would not hesitate to injure Canada in order to be petted by his boss, Carlos Shitwater. Some say that Adam got out easy, for his injuries to Canada has turned it into a country with a wild government drunk on power passing the most ridiculous laws. Canada’s new moto “save the planet, suicide the people”.

    #123934
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Oh, and I really hope that Adam Exton’s family are really suffering, in the same way as the people their son murdered are suffering. No pity for serial killers, especially the sane ones.

    #123935
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Cicero did not say this. Why have fake quotes?”

    Perhaps, if you cite your sources, we might then share your concern. I find no evidence that the quote comes not from Cicero, and much that it does.

    #123936
    John Day
    Participant

    Dr. D prophesied, and I do wonder how this goes down, along those same lines:
    “This is all well-arranged, well-approved by the White Hats behind Trump, mind you. Can HE hand Ukraine to Putin? Nope. So it needs to be a done deal before he resurfaces. Can HE be seen to flip Congress, crash the dollar, destroy Europe? Nope. They need to do that on their own.”

    It’s nice to have the whole Kissinger article from 12/17/22 now.

    Thanks for all of the thoughtful input yesterday and this morning, Co-Commenters.

    Replacing Used Puppets (below) https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/replacing-used-puppets

    #123938
    John Day
    Participant

    In recent days I have had to wonder if there is about to be a change of direction by the US government, particularly in foreign relations, which are now dominated by efforts to maintain the US-unipolar-hegemony, which has already eroded away since last year’s escape-from-Afghanistan. Faith in and fear of the US military fell after that debacle, but the NATO proxy-war against Russia, employing the Ukrainian army, trained and equipped to NATO standards, and the largest in Europe (except Russia) a year ago, was supposed to change all of that, and it has been doing so. The US “confiscated” over $300 billion of Russian national $US reserves, which hastens the end of the $US as global reserve currency.
    Preparations by the BRICS nations to replace the $US in global trade have been underway since 2008, but have recently become much accelerated. They have been enthusiastically joined by the Shanghai Cooperation Council, the Eurasian Economic Union, African and South American countries.
    The current Washington courtiers are taking their bribes and introducing their bills as agreed, but they are not serving the longer term interests of the “owners” at this point. Those are eroding with the delusion of a “unipolar world”. Can the current imperial courtiers follow new orders that will be so different from their emphatically expressed positions to date? Would it be convincing to anybody? What’s Plan-B? How soon could it be operational?
    It looks like “Joe Biden” could accept blame for a lot of things that have been going badly.

    ​ ​Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. praised Carlson’s explosive revelations about his uncle.
    “The most courageous newscast in 60 years,” Kennedy said. “The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which are democracy has never recovered.”
    https://newspunch.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-cias-murder-of-my-uncle-was-a-successful-coup-america-has-never-recovered​

    ​ ​A former aide to Trump adviser Peter Navarro has taken a “deep dive” into the laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden, finding at least 459 illegal acts, including seven felonies by Joe Biden, after reading “every single email, every single text message.”

    ‘Deep dive’ into Biden laptop reveals 459 illegal acts

    ​ ​Tara Reade is ready to testify to Congress, and believes other victims will go public​
    ​The allegations stem back to 1993 when Reade worked for then-Senator Joe Biden as a staffer. According to her account, he sexually assaulted her at the Capitol that year and she later filed an official complaint against him. Nothing ever came of that complaint and Reade drifted away from her position with the Delaware senator.​..
    ​..Biden allegedly told Reade after the assault, “You’re nothing.”​ …
    ​..“I have given up hope for actual justice. I do hope at the least [for] a proper Congressional investigation into Joe Biden. This may open the door to other women who were also afraid, silenced and also for staff to tell the truth under oath,” Reade commented…
    https://www.rt.com/news/568264-tara-reade-allegations-biden/

    ​ ​US prosecutors investigating Democrats over FTX donations​
    ​Under Federal Election Commission regulations, political campaigns and committees are required to return donations that are later found to be illegal, even if the money has already been spent.
    https://www.rt.com/news/568472-sbf-ftx-democrat-donations/

    ​ Alastair Crooke looks at the shift in the Ukraine-narrative support which has just been signaled by the (Rothschild) Financial Times. ​He says that the “Ukraine can win” narrative is untenable now, which is the signal that (Rockefeller-asset) Henry Kissinger gave diplomatically last Friday, that ceasefire, followed by negotiation is in order, to avoid repeating the mistake Woodrow Wilson made in 1916, delaying the negotiation of peace in Europe in deference to his own political re-election campaign that year.
    Crooke points out that the current neocon-insiders can forget Ukraine as quickly as they forgot Afghanistan since last year. Will this be the moment to let Biden take the fall for the-team? How many members of the-team will need to bow-out to make a change-in-management seem plausible? Will tarring the CIA be convincing? Is a real change in the deep-state actually possible? If not, then how can the US become “agreement capable” in any kind of treaty-negotiations?
    Crooke points out that the State and deep-state have come to a fuller understanding of the uses of fear, and the creation of “mass formation”, which Hitler, Goebbels and others clearly discovered already.

    Managing the Ukraine Denial Narrative

    What Crooke does not point out is that the COVID-Pandemic fear operation, which sought to dehumanize “the unvaccinated” in a critical time period, creating a leper-class of new-untermenschen, failed to reach critical mass. Principled people, all across the US and the world, resisted, “stood naked with the Jews”. As another year has passed, there is no day that goes by without additional evidence of harm and death from the gene-therapy COVID-“vaccines”. Everybody now has friends and family who have gotten painfully ill, developed autoimmune disease, blood clots, myocarditis , stroke or heart attack. There has been a rash of sudden cancer spreads and new cancer diagnoses and deaths this year, which shows no sign of slowing down.
    With the post-Omicron phase of much milder COVID illness, less severe than influenza this fall, there has been some re-evaluation by the people who went along, but were not true-believers in the control-narrative. Has this reduced the ability of the “authorities” to present a compelling control-narrative of fear now? Has society been somewhat “inoculated against” that?

    #123939
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Matrix is interesting, yes, that’s why the mythology has traction. The only thing we know for sure is that they were NOT farming humans for power. As stated, that is amazingly stupid. …In the original the humans are the COMPUTING power, that creates the Matrix. They “visualize” the Matrix reality into being with their “thoughts”. That is essential reality in fact and the belief of Kabbalist/New Agers specifically.

    The Producers forced them to change it to something very stupid and also inaccurate. One wonders why.

    I don’t prefer your theory, it probably runs more like this: “Neo is not The One” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkMU1mKdwPI I won’t spoiler his theory.

    The metaphor of pre-planning to drop the human civilizations on schedule to control them over millennia speaks for itself. I say it all the time, as I did again, above. The question of the Matrix is: how do we stop the cycle?

    As you say, the other question is: how do we kill the machine when we are ourselves symbiants? Unlike wolves and foxes Humans cannot live without “machines”, tools, technology. They need to be used “correctly.” Bronze-age Greece had brass computers and steam robots but that isn’t what killed them.

    As Orlov would say: the “Technosphere”, that is, unthinking machines – such as corporations – working towards unthinking ends – such as turning the planet into a nail-salon parking lot. It’s “Logical”. It’s “Profitable”. It’s “Orderly.” It is #AntiLogos and #AntiLife, which is messy, wasteful, and unpredictable. It is a line, not a circle. This is indeed our present challenge, to stop the cycle of the Machine-People and go another way, without blowing everything up.

    #123940
    John Day
    Participant

    Academic Medical Oncologist Angus Dalgleish in the UK has been trying to get government agencies to evaluate the sudden rash of cancer recurrences, new diagnoses and deaths among the “vaccinated”.
    Other cancer specialists agree with me about vaccine harm, but the authorities still won’t listen

    Other cancer specialists agree with me about vaccine harm, but the authorities still won’t listen

    ​ ​The discovery of a contract awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense to Labyrinth Global Health for “COVID-19 Research” in November 2019 has raised questions about the Government’s knowledge of the novel coronavirus.
    ​ ​The contract was part of a larger project for a “Biological threat reduction program in Ukraine,” suggesting that the U.S. Government was at the very least aware of the virus before it spread through Wuhan, China in December 2019, and before it was officially named Covid-19 by the World Health Organization in February 2020.

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

    ​ Peter McCullough MD points out yet another “rare side effect” from COVID-“vaccination”.​
    COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects: “I Can’t Hear You”
    Risk of Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss Doubled in the Elderly after Vaccination
    https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/covid-19-vaccine-side-effects-i-cant

    ​ Apparently 5 days per week and 8-10 hour days were enough until now for the Russian arms industry.
    Russian arms manufacturers switch to six-day working week
    Shifts at defense enterprises may also be extended to 12 hours
    https://www.rt.com/russia/568381-urals-defense-industry-ukraine/

    ​ ​Authorities are equipping shelters in apartment buildings and shopping centers in the Moscow region, the head of the Emergencies Ministry’s regional administration, Sergei Poletikin, told the plenary session of the Moscow Region Duma.
    ​ ​These works are carried out in all apartment buildings by the public services sector and should be completed by December 25. This is the decision of the operational staff.”
    ​ ​He said the shelters in apartment buildings and shopping centers were protecting up to 15 million residents, and added that authorities had decided not to put up signs with the exact addresses of the shelters so as not to “upset the public.”
    https://warnews247-gr.translate.goog/episimi-dilosi-exoplizontai-ta-katafygia-se-polykatoikies-kai-eborika-kentra-tis-moschas-apofasi-sok-tis-rosikis-igesias/

    #123941
    John Day
    Participant

    Pepe Escobar on diplomatic overture by the 5000 year-old world order
    ​Xi of Arabia and the petroyuan drive
    Xi Jinping has made an offer difficult for the Arabian Peninsula to ignore: China will be guaranteed buyers of your oil and gas, but we will pay in yuan.
    https://thecradle.co/Article/Columns/19565

    Can’t trust these guys. What do they mean, and who are they addressing?
    We’ve entered into a “new world order” says BlackRock Chairman
    BlackRock manages almost $10 trillion in investments, making it the world’s biggest asset manager and is a big player in companies developing digital vaccine passports and “digital wallets” that track and allocate carbon allowances.

    We’ve entered into a “new world order” says BlackRock Chairman

    ​ ​The role of the US military in stealing Syria’s oil runs deeper than mere petty theft. The funds are used to prop up Kurdish self-rule and ensure Syria’s geographic division.
    ​ ​The main goal of siphoning off Syrian oil is to help the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), which is protected by more than 13 US military bases, to finance its activities and cover its local fuel needs.
    ​ ​It also aims to preserve the area of US influence between Baghdad and Damascus, while simultaneously choke-holding the Syrian government – and deprive the largest Syrian population in the area controlled by Damascus of vital resources such as oil, gas, wheat, and medicine.

    Stolen Syrian Oil: The Fuel for Syria’s Partition

    ​ The deposed President of Peru was bad for Rio Tinto and other global mining interests. The US supports the new government.
    ​Death Toll From Peru Protests Tops 20 as ‘Coup’ Government Extends Castillo’s Jail Term
    “The democratic space is closing; we are on the way to authoritarianism,” warned a leading human rights advocate in the South American nation.
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/16/death-toll-peru-protests-tops-20-coup-government-extends-castillos-jail-term

    #123942
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    MIlgram’s experiment has issues, I learn from Dr. D. What the clarification reveals is not very comforting to me (emphases mine):

    “Half of them guessed it was fake. They didn’t buy the setup. They knew it was a charade, so they went along with it. Those who thought it was real tended to be the ones who’d “defied” authority and pulled out of it.

    “Perry and a team of co-authors published a more formal follow-up to that book this summer. PsyPost reports her summary of the results:

    “People who believed the learner was in pain were two and a half more times likely to defy the experimenter and refuse to give further shocks. We found that contrary to Milgram’s claims, the majority of subjects in the obedience experiments were defiant, and a significant reason for their refusal to continue was to spare the man pain….. The new research builds upon findings from a previous study, which analyzed recordings of 91 conversations conducted immediately after the termination of the experiments. The recordings showed that most of the obedient subjects justified continuing the experiment because they believed the learner was not really being harmed.”

    While I am glad to hear that my fellow critters aren’t as blindly obedient as Milgram claimed, I’m disturbed by their willingness to go along with a pointless vulgar charade of violence in the name of science. We live in an age where younguns have difficulty distinguishing the virtual from the real (and worse, they are mostly unaware of this difficulty, which lack of awareness is probably the main cause of their inability to distinguish virtual from real in the first place.

    A curious reflection: those who were more credulous of authority (believed the experiment delivered real pain) were more inclined to defy authority, while those who were more skeptical of authority (“knew” the experiment was fake) were more inclined to go along with the scam.

    All in all, I prefer the credulous. The salt of the earth, whom I will call here ‘the red state people’, were more willing to trust authority to go to war after 911 (which qualifies as a “flawed experiment” but a very successful psyop), although part of their reason since WWII was to get an education and ‘get ahead’ (one could have a lot of cognitive pun with that phrase). Which brings this to light:

    “Milgram’s Obedience Studies
    In the early 1960’s, in response to a newspaper ad or a letter, forty men, aged 20 – 50 and representing various occupations came to the psychological laboratory of Yale University to take part in what they believed would be a study of memory and learning. They were paid $4.50 for their participation.”

    Minimum wage was around a buck back then. $4.5 was half a day’s work for non-union blue collar working people as well as college students. It’s not that people will sell their souls for cheap — that’s another discussion. It’s that people inherently set aside their souls when it comes to money. We’ve been taught to since that first money in a Xmas envelope burned our fingers at age 5. We don’t take life or ourselves as seriously when we’re paid to do something; no seriousness is required, once the money question has been answered, other than the seriousness of ‘doing a good job’. Which means ‘make the boss happy’. So most people made the boss happy even though they believed it was a charade, but many people defied the boss, ‘did a bad job’, if they believed the job itself was real.

    Somehow this tangentially relates to clueless honk’s remarks about domestication? I love tangential relations. The coffee is kicking in along with the cannabis.

    I will first say about clueless honk’s Matrix domestic perspective that, if humanity has a virus, it’s the one that William Burroughs called “a virus from outer space”: language. The Tower of Babel story tangentially references this concept too.

    ***

    And now, let us pause for our Five Minutes of Daily Hate:

    “I really hope that Adam Exton’s family are really suffering, in the same way as the people their son murdered are suffering. No pity for serial killers, especially the sane ones.”

    Let us all shove forward, hard, the lever that turns the pain up on our scientific test subject, shall we? Phasers set to Hurt Them to Death or Wish They Were. Listen to them scream. That will teach them; and their suffering will improve things for the rest of us. How? Moral emotional magic! It’s like trial by ordeal AND burning the witches at once! Win-win!

    Now, I know this is currently only in our minds, but let’s practice, shall we? Prepare ourselves for the day when we can actually torture real people in real time as civil law decays and we get to enact the inner soul dramas that we’ve practiced online onto the real (not virtual!) world.

    Bur for now, we’ll have to settle for imaginary torture. I’m giddy with glee, aren’t you? Feel the Anger… leered Emperor Palpatine at the foolish arrogant young Jedi…

    #123943
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Another swift knee to the groin for Eurotardistan®

    UKistan insurance monopoly crumbing and Greek tanker fleets with nothing to bring to the rump continent.

    Russia and India will merge their oil tanker fleets.

    The Indian government doesn’t care about European ‘price ceilings’ on Russian oil and will continue to buy the required quantity by supplying raw materials to Asia from Russia.

    The advantages of creating a single fleet:

    ▪️The purchase price of oil for Asia will allow the Indians to take over the rental and insurance coverage.

    ▪️India will be able to buy oil and oil products from Russia without any restrictions.

    ▪️Asia will separate itself from Western ship insurance and gain independence from financial and transport services.

    .

    .

    #123944
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Speaking of “We’re in a new world order of geopolitical fragmentation,”, … this stuff is becoming topic du jourr these days, Mauldin from few days back:

    Felix Zulauf: “A Decade of Roller Coaster Markets”
    https://www.mauldineconomics.com/global-macro-update/felix-zulauf-a-decade-of-roller-coaster-markets

    Felix will probably be generally proven correct but time wise line? Who knows? It’s tough to be correct three days forward!

    F.S.

    #123945
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Kissinger.
    That POS will be 100 in May next year.
    Has his bloody hands all over 9-11-73 military coup in Chile.
    Two months later, qualification games for the World Cup 74, Soviet team asked not to play Chilean team in the National Stadium in Santiago, since it was still drenched in blood of people killed there after the merciless round up of all Allende’s supporters. FIFA refused, resulting in the shortest soccer game in the history of Cup, lasting about 27 seconds, where the Chilean team had to “perform” passes against non-existing opponent, scoring a goal and given one more as a punishment for absent Soviets making a final score 2:0.
    Window into horror that happened on that Stadium post 9-11 can be expressed as what Pinochet’s goons did to Victor Jara, prominent Chilean poet, songwriter and theater director. His political affiliation, like Allende’s, will hardly earn him a sympathetic nod from the American audience, people “who know shit”, view the world only as a “Cap” or “Comm” and not what is “Right” or “Wrong”.

    #123946
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Technosphere® is Prometheus

    Prometheus is known for defying the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization.

    Some interpret the root of ‘Prometheus’ to mean ‘forethought’.

    Well, technology certainly projects a vision into the future in order to exercise control of the Present.

    Although the Technosphere® does give off a ‘Be Here Now’ kinda vib.

    It is here Now.

    Good things happen when you steal fire,

    and very bad things happen when you steal fire.

    .

    #123947
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Matrix is Prometheus Unchained

    #123948
    kultsommer
    Participant

    On the lighter note:
    Magic of over the decade fascination with this photo on the Shorpy site:
    https://www.shorpy.com/node/5120

    #123949
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Good things happen when you steal fire,
    and very bad things happen when you steal fire.”

    Indeed.

    #123950
    zerosum
    Participant

    The new life saving formula, 30/30
    ———–
    Your politician needs the votes from the expat Ukrainians.
    ————
    Social media/platforms changed all communication options
    I remember when the success of a revolution depended on seizing of the radio station.
    The number one story is not Ukraine.
    1. The bad weather – too much
    2. Elon Musk – Twitter
    3. January 6
    4. FBI twitter files
    5. Inflation
    6. Xmas
    7. Flue +2 symptoms
    8. FTX
    9. Immigrants
    10.
    ——–

    ——–

    #123951
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “I remember when the success of a revolution depended on seizing of the radio station.”

    🙂

    Radio Free At Last!

    #123952
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    “I have no information regarding that and this conversation is terminated”

    A man or woman from a Washington State hospital (there are many) in reply to an inquiry about a Vaxd to UnVaxd transfusion gone awry.
    Reminds me about a transfusion proposed for my newborn son at Duke University hospital circa 1990 when the vaunted medical institution couldn’t “guarantee” a safe blood supply during another Fauci-sponsored virus crisis.
    And we had no fewer than 8 matched donors available and HIV-free.
    Some.
    Things.
    Never.
    Change.

    Btw, the present chairman Duke Ophthalmology Ed Buckley determined in 1990 that my son’s blind eye/optic nerve hypoplasia wasn’t blind or hypoplastic or an element of PDAC syndrome. Ed clearly has disadvantages but one of them wasn’t deficient ambition.

    #123953
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “SMH. ALL the polls are fake. Okay, you think he’d hold a poll to return Trump that would FAIL? That’d be embarrassing. Now we have 3? polls that all say “We love Elon, Elon’s doing the direction we like” and the 4th poll says “We hate Elon: resign”? What sense does that make?

    It’s all a show. It’s all made up. All of it, based on hazy realities underneath.”

    This assumes rational actors, both individually and as mobs. But that’s oversimplifying on my part to lay some logic plank on which to build.

    IF… the media can be faked, and IF the media can mold public opinion, both of which seem to be pretty well-proven at this point, then real media can mold public opinion, and fake media can mold public opinion.

    So the idea of monolithic control enters into multiple inter/intra-recursive (I know, big word: impressive, huh? 😉 ) feedback loops* that it is incapable of controlling monolithically, centrally… and without central control, there is no control. (Just ask your head about life with the Lower Half, i.e., The Body.)

    Elon could’ve faked the first 3 and let the 4th be real. Or vice-versa. Or vise-verca. When the well-laid plans of mice and men gang agley, so do our well-laid conspiracy theories.

    My take is that the polls are real, and that Elon rather likes the idea of being able to pretend he’s no longer running Twitter because of some poll he agreed to.

    He wins either way at this point. For now, he gets Double Bonus: he gets to be both Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, in plain naked sight while enjoying functional invisibility as a thousand fingers point at a thousand fingers pointing at the moon… and its doppleganger. Triple Bonus if one adds that backing out per the 4th poll (“poll”?) adds to his rep for straight-talk and being real (“being real”?).

    *Polemos spoke of this in a most excellent post about a month(?) ago. His remarks emphasized the AI aspect of it, which was meta enough, but when you bring the human layers into focus with the AI layers, the thing goes majorly fractally chaotic. Fractal chaos is wild shit, knowaddumeen?

    Today’s Yogi tea tag says: If they’re not the boss of you, then who is? (Not. I made that one up.) What today’s tag, just now revealed from its magic tea bag wrapper, says is: Trust creates peace.

    How apt. Huh. Whoa, dude. Kinda weird.

    ***

    Xmas radio music was killed by the video star:

    Too Much Too Much.

    Each single element is amazing. The brain-clot overkill eye-stocking stuffing turns what should be very special into something that feels like an LGQT annual Unicorn Day parade. Shame. The director and perhaps his authority focus groups, “is, as we have seen, incapable of evading the most vulgar of art’s temptations: that of being a genius. Jorge Luis Borges”

    (The opening shot is in my old stomping grounds, the Palouse hill country S of Spokane, Washington, USA. It really is that pool-table felt green at certain times of the year. But the director hired a crew to spray paint parts of the grass green to make it ‘perfect’. Perfection sucks. Perfection is AI, and AI sucks.)

    #123954
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    BTW, Musk claimed he was vaccinated after a year and a half of being a major “antivaxxer”. Here is, er, proof:

    Vaxx Faxx

    The question is not Who to trust? There are no who’s among us, only by-lines. The question is What to believe?

    #123955
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Huh. Trevor Horn of Video Killed the Radio STar fame also wrote the Toys Closing of the Season song.

    Spooky

    #123956
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Helmer peddling his new book!

    This book tells the story of a lawsuit in a Sydney court – the only one in the country to have challenged the legality of the COVID-19 quarantine fee scheme, and to uncover the lawlessness of the state camouflaged by media propaganda which most Australians have believed to be the truth — until now.

    SMALL COUNTRIES BEWARE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE – NEW BOOK OUT TODAY REVEALS HOW LATE IT IS

    SMALL COUNTRIES BEWARE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE – NEW BOOK OUT TODAY REVEALS HOW LATE IT IS

    F.S.

    #123957
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Personal Confession True Lunatic Story:

    that Toys song, played on an old cassette tape over the Xmas holidays of 21001-2002, turned me into what some kinds of ‘rational thinkers’ would call ‘nuts’. The song itself is powerfully moving even with its somewhat overwrought lyrics. It grabbed me, made me spin around like a whirling dervish in prayer, which I suppose I was as I cursed through my snotty tears and told God to take my dirty ass what He made and take it in some kind of sacrifice, a barter exchange for the safety and well-being of just one Afghani orphan (we were daisy-bombing the shit out of Central Asia at the time, something-something bin Laden).

    “Just don’t kill me or make me so useless I become more burden than I or others can bear. Can you do this, pls?”

    Dirty motherfucker. Ic hate God. I love God. I believe in God. I think God is just a projection of our psyches. I wish God would just go away and leave us alone. I hope God is real and hasn’t left us alone.

    By spring of 2002, the huge nosebleeds that used to be stoppable by conventional electro-caustic cautery, were only made worse by them and I became a nasal blood sieve. I received a letter from Mom telling me that she’d been diagnosed with HHT (almost unknown at that time) and I probably had it too.

    I’ve been a physical burden ever since but not as much as I am a blessing, I’m told. So so far so good. Magical thinking is powerful stuff and something we all do whether we know/admit it or not. Coincidences and all that. But it gives me hope, even comfort,to think that some little brat is alive and not-psychotic because I’d offered myself.

    Singalong

    Thanx for letting me share that.

    #123958
    John Day
    Participant

    Kissinger would have turned the electric shock up and administered it each time in the Milgram Experiment, whether he had caught-on to the trick or not, right? Henry the K is very good at distancing his intellect, and his actions, from his human-feelings. Kissinger has a keen intellect. He just does.

    Kissinger is anxious and insecure, I have read. He must have to set that aside and work past it daily.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
    Of the twelve participants, only three refused to continue to the end of the experiment. Speaking during the episode, social psychologist Clifford Stott discussed the influence that the idealism of scientific inquiry had on the volunteers. He remarked: “The influence is ideological. It’s about what they believe science to be, that science is a positive product, it produces beneficial findings and knowledge to society that are helpful for society. So there’s that sense of science is providing some kind of system for good.”[31]

    Building on the importance of idealism, some recent researchers suggest the “engaged followership” perspective. Based on an examination of Milgram’s archive, in a recent study, social psychologists Alexander Haslam, Stephen Reicher and Megan Birney, at the University of Queensland, discovered that people are less likely to follow the prods of an experimental leader when the prod resembles an order. However, when the prod stresses the importance of the experiment for science (i.e. “The experiment requires you to continue”), people are more likely to obey.[32] The researchers suggest the perspective of “engaged followership”: that people are not simply obeying the orders of a leader, but instead are willing to continue the experiment because of their desire to support the scientific goals of the leader and because of a lack of identification with the learner.[33][34] Also a neuroscientific study supports this perspective, namely that watching the learner receive electric shocks does not activate brain regions involving empathic concerns.[35]

    I always like to pair the results of the Asch Conformity Experiments with Milgram’s work, to broaden the human dimension of following-orders and conforming to group norms. Sometimes people have to suppress their own thoughts and feelings, even when they are correct, in order to be-like-everybody-else. Some people (minority) refuse to conform-against-their-better-judgement, and some do it with stress, but some just conform with no sign of stress at all, knowing that their answer is technically incorrect. https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

    Plenty of people would give a right answer and a wrong answer at different sittings, when the experiment was run multiple times, implying internal conflict.

    I think Kissinger is an ideal messenger and negotiator for the owners, because he is meticulous at understanding and aligning with their interests, and negotiating well on their behalf, whatever his personal feelings might be. His intellect will reliably be in their corner.

    #123959
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    LATITUDINAL LONGINGS

    “Trace the pagan roots”: a handy expression, especially as applied to comparisons of Western European cultures to Eastern Eurasian cultures. It sounds like a hairdresser’s term, a way of separating the Teutonic blond from the dark roots of Semitic brunette.

    Tracing the blond roots of my Anglo-Saxon heritage to their roots in the geographical scalp, I find that all of we from the British Isles lived above the 50th parallel, sort of along the globe’s eyebrow ridge below the arctic hairline of the polar cap (which lies at 66 degrees latitude). The Scots, of which I am one, lived above the 55th parallel. Our Norwegian compatriots, such as my wife’s ancestors, lived from the 58th parallel to well above the Arctic Circle. My ancestors’ immigration to America bequeathed to me a distinct solar advantage, that of growing up in Chicago at roughly 42 degrees latitude, where the winter nights aren’t nearly so long as those of my Scotch and Norse kin.

    Pause to do the numbers: according to The Old Farmers Almanac, December 26th is the last of the Dark Days of winter solstice. In Chicago, December 26th’s daylight will last 9 hours. Locations at 55 degrees latitude receive 7 hours & 10 minutes. Those living above 61 degrees shiver by on a sliver of sunlight lasting 5 hours & 28 minutes, while folks above 64 degrees barely adjust their eyes to the light before their 3 hours-&-46-minutes-long sun squint leaves them again in the dark basin of cold.

    My Scottish forebears, located between the 55th and 61st parallels, survived on 5 & 1/2 to 7 hours’ solar nourishment during the Dark Days. These rations of light and warmth were served in a climate known for its dense and unrelenting fogs. Nights lasted 18 hours. My wife’s ancestors above the 58th parallel were geographically insane, victims of a frigid sensory-deprivation chamber known as Norse winter. Their necessary ingredients for a happy (or at least survivable) holiday were logs, lard, lager, lullabies, and liturgies along with lust, lasciviousness, licentiousness, lassitude and languor. Fa-la-la-la-la — la-la-la-la. These days were hellaciously holy long before Santa deposed St. Nicholas, Jesus deposed Mithras, Mithras deposed Ba’al, or Uranus lost His euphemisms.

    Rome, great-grandparent of what we call Western civilization, is located along the 42nd parallel, about the same as Erie, PA (dismal name), Kalamazoo, MI (sounds like a wizard’s sneeze), and my hometown, Chicago, (located at the frostbit extremity of Lake Michigan’s icy Xmas stocking). In ancient and superstitious Rome, Saturnalia took place on days and nights respectively lasting 9 and 15 hours. They, too, felt the black pinch and were quite ready, come mid-December, to drink, dine and dance the nights away.

    Then is when an interesting social inversion would take place, a reversal of roles between master and slave, priest and believer, even men and women. From dressing in drag to mocking the higher orders to drinking one’s fill of the master’s finest, the human model of the world was stood on its head and, rather than objecting to this, it delighted in it, dancing on its hands and clapping its feet. The party goes on to this day.

    My parents experienced what I envision as the finest honeymoon imaginable, spending a week in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, the only officially acknowledged and adequately funded, lauded, and larded, pagan celebration remaining in North America excepting perhaps Halloween. Along with Mardi Gras’ effulgent festivities and fraternal feelings are fisticuffs and fornications. (Fricative alliterations should be not only exshcuszhed but exshpected when sho musch alcohol is releashed at largshe. Likewise slurred sibilance.)

    Mardi Gras, or ‘Fat Tuesday’, makes excess the norm. The bad results of such an orgy are not to be much marvelled at in a culture that worships sex and violence as much as ours. My biological father, having lost marriage, myself and my brother to his own personal bacchanalia of thirty-odd years of alcoholism, maintained that “if you get that many dogs together there’s bound to be a few sons o’ bitches in the bunch”. (According to the family history of Greco-Roman theogony, a few sons o’ bitches are all that survived dinner!) The extraordinary aspect of Fat Tuesday’s controlled riot (and I believe that presidential primaries should begin in Louisiana on Shrove Tuesday!) is its undisputed reign of joyful ebullience which is its raison d’être.

    As Christianity became THE religion of the Western world, its political administrators had little choice but to co-opt these ancient ritual celebrations (Saturnalia and its myriad cohorts) by combining them with Christian themes. In this compromise wherein the Catholic church superimposed key Christian rites and events over older pagan traditions, Saturnalia was a Big Bust. There was no stopping it; the literal forces of dark and light were so dynamically opposed in people’s lives during this time of material wealth and solar scarcity that the best the pope could hope for was to get Christ’s name tagged onto it.

    History claims that almost all Christmas ritual is appropriated from other rites. From stable birth and guiding star to giving gifts and the birth of a deity, it was mostly in place before the birthday story of Jesus was chronologically pegged upon the 25th of December. It was always a struggle to keep the reveling from overtaking the hallowed birthday remembrance of Jesus Christ.

    The Pagan/Christian compromise bent both ways. Hence the overwhelming popularity of Halloween over All Saints Day. By the 7th century, All Saints Day (also known as ‘Allhallows’ and ’Hallowmass’) was firmly in place at November 1st on the Christian calendar as a celebration of all its martyrs and saints. But, through the pugnacious obstinance of the Celtic culture (and its extraordinary, artistic, folk genius), old rites which were associated with the Celtically decreed start of winter (November 1st) took over from All Saints Day and, sneaking in the back door of ‘All Hallows Eve’, replaced it with the Celts’ exotic, magic rituals of winter preparation.

    Specifically, the rituals underlying our modern Halloween were designed as a sort of prophylaxis against all the scary, spooky, spectral evil that the Celtic mind associated with the world’s darkening as the sun sank low in the sky. Woods are the residence of choice for imaginary demons and dark gods all around the world, and most of Europe was a woodsy place until increasing agrarian population and the iron industry devoured the forests for tillable soil and smelters’ charcoal.

    The old All Hallows Eve was sort of a collective whistle in the dark to drown out the banshee’s wail and set up perimeter defenses against incubi, goblins, witches, men in gorilla suits and the like. It is interesting that the prime symbol of Halloween is an illuminated head, Mr. Jack O’ Lantern. Pluto, former landlord of hell, would have been pleased to note this obeisance to his dark domain vis-a-vis’ the old Saturnalian ritual of “offering heads and lights to Pluto”. It is also interesting that Frankenstein, who was born from what is considered to be the first modern science-fiction novel, has become a larger icon of All Hallows Eve than all the saints and demons alike; which suggests that we are perhaps more frightened of our own scientific necromancy than Satanic magic or pagan demons. Ask yourself, would Ol’ Frankie be much scared of the Devil? I mean, he’s already dead or, to be exact, postmaturely alive.
    (to be continued)

    And just like that, I have my first serious bleed since my surgery almost exactly a year ago. Powerful solstice mojo going on around this apartment.

    #123960
    Dora
    Participant

    The Milgram experiment and the 20%. Here’s a solstice cheer to the 20%+ reading TAE. (If the lack of uptake of vax is any indication there’s more than 20% willing to defy authority when it’s their own life on the line.)

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