Jan 172023
 
 January 17, 2023  Posted by at 10:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Hasui Kawase Mimhae Pavilion, Kyongju, Korea 1940

 

How The Davos Elite Took Back Control (Fazi)
Global Political Elite Skipping Davos (RT)
All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front (Escobar)
Kiev Coaching EU On Path To Ruin – Exiled Ukrainian Politician (RT)
West Sees Ukraine As Spoils Of Cold War – Medvedchuk (RT)
Croatian President Weighs In On ‘Proxy War’ Against Russia (RT)
Biden Uses His Lawyers To Shield His Classified Docs From The FBI (Turley)
More Documents Marked As Classified Found At Biden’s Home – White House (CBS)
Adam Schiff Admits Biden May Have Endangered National Security (CB)
Did The Deep State Turn on Biden? (Roach)
Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election (Jacobin)
‘Twitter Files’ Expose Big Pharma Bullying (ZH)
China Records First Population Decline In 60 Years (RT)
The Black Album (Trish Wood)
There Is Nothing Green About Green Energy (Pettimore)
The Age of Exterminations: How to Kill a Few Billion People (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

The Woke Mind Virus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1613830456243273730

 

 

Dowd sudden death epidemic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615116979030966278

 

 

Forget about the housing market. It’s done.

 

 

BBC stickers

 

 

Pregnant women are not getting vaxxed.

 

 

Carpe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615019200921182217

 

 

 

 

 

 

The business elite.

How The Davos Elite Took Back Control (Fazi)

Founded in 1971 by Schwab himself, the WEF is “committed to improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation”, also known as multistakeholder governance. The idea is that global decision-making should not be left to governments and nation-states — as in the post-war multilateralist framework enshrined in the United Nations — but should involve a whole range of non-government stakeholders: civil society bodies, academic experts, media personalities and, most important, multinational corporations. In its own words, the WEF’s project is “to redefine the international system as constituting a wider, multifaceted system of global cooperation in which intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions are embedded as a core, but not the sole and sometimes not the most crucial, component”.

While this may sound fairly benign, it neatly encapsulates the basic philosophy of globalism: insulating policy from democracy by transferring the decision-making process from the national and international level, where citizens theoretically are able to exercise some degree of influence over policy, to the supranational level, by placing a self-selected group of unelected, unaccountable “stakeholders” — mainly corporations — in charge of global decisions concerning everything from energy and food production to the media and public health. The underlying undemocratic philosophy is the same one underpinning the philanthrocapitalist approach of people such Bill Gates, himself a long-time partner of the WEF: that non-governmental social and business organisations are best suited to solve the world’s problems than governments and multilateral institutions.

Even though the WEF has increasingly focused its agenda on fashionable topics such as environmental protection and social entrepreneurship, there is little doubt as to which interests Schwab’s brainchild is actually promoting and empowering: the WEF is itself mostly funded by around 1,000 member companies — typically global enterprises with multi-billion dollar turnovers, which include some of the world’s biggest corporations in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna). The composition of the WEF’s board is also very revealing, including Laurence D. Fink, CEO of Blackrock, David M. Rubenstein, co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, and Mark Schneider, CEO of Nestlé. There’s no need to resort to conspiracy theories to posit that the WEF’s agenda is much more likely to be tailored to suit the interests of its funders and board members — the world’s ultra-wealthy and corporate elites — rather than to “improving the state of the world”, as the organisation claims.

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CEOs take over.

Global Political Elite Skipping Davos (RT)

The annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland has kicked off on Monday with a number of top-tier leaders absent. US President Joe Biden is skipping this year’s gathering, along with French President Emmanuel Macron, and new British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also passing on the event, along with the entire Russian business elite, which has been forced off the guest list by Ukraine-related sanctions. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Chinese businessmen will also miss the forum following the aftershocks of a recent spike in Covid-19 cases and troubles on the domestic stock market, which saw some $224 billion erased last year from the fortunes of China’s wealthiest people.


Of the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, only German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to attend Davos this year, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Despite the shrinking number of political leaders, this year’s attendance list is rich in top managers. Among 2,700 participants in the official WEF sessions, “we’re likely to surpass the old record from 2020 with 600 global CEOs – including 1,500 C-suite level overall,” according to WEF head of digital and marketing, George Schmitt. According to Bloomberg, a total of 116 billionaires are attending the WEF this year, a 40% rise from ten years ago. Representatives from the US will form the largest group with 33 delegates. Some 18 more billionaires are coming from Europe, and 13 from India, including industrialist Gautam Adani, the world’s fourth-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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“Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult.”

All Quiet (Panic) on the Western Front (Escobar)

Cynics of all persuasions may be excused for lamenting Mr. Zircon – currently on oceanic patrol encompassing the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and of course “Mare Nostrum” Mediterranean – won’t be presenting his business card at Davos. Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult. The Great Reset does mingle merrily with NATO’s agenda as agent provocateur, financer and weaponizer of the proxy Empire vs. Russia war in black hole Ukraine. NAKO – an acronym for North Atlantic Killing Organization – would be more appropriate in this case. As Koenig summarizes it, “NATO enters any territory where the ‘conventional’ media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.”

In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center. The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030. Virtually every government in the NATOstan area and the “Western Hemisphere” (US establishment definition) has been hijacked by Agenda 2030 – which translates, essentially, as hoarding, privatizing and financializing all the earth’s assets, under the pretext of “protecting” them. Translation: the marketization and monetization of the entire natural world.

Davos superstar shills such as insufferable bore Niall Ferguson are just well rewarded vassals: western intellectuals of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton mould that would never dare bite the hand that feeds them. Ferguson just wrote a column on Bloomberg titled “All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front” – basically to peddle the risk of WWIII, on behalf of his masters, blaming of course “China as the arsenal of autocracy”. Among serial high-handed inanities, this one stands out. Ferguson writes, “There are two obvious problems with US strategy (…) The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former.” Cluelessness here is a euphemism. Ferguson clearly has no idea “algorithmic weapons” mean; if he’s referring to electronic warfare, the US may have been able to maintain superiority for a while in Ukraine, but that’s over.

[..] Nobody with an IQ over room temperature will expect Davos next week to discuss any aspect of the NATO vs. Eurasia existential war seriously – not to mention propose diplomacy. So I’ll leave you with yet another typical tawdry story about how the Empire – who rules over Davos – deals in practice with its vassals. While in Sicily earlier this year I learned that an ultra high-value Pentagon asset had landed in Rome, in haste, as part of an unscheduled visit. A few days later the reason for the visit was printed in La Repubblica, one of the papers of the toxic Agnelli clan. That was a Mafia scam: a face-to-face “suggestion” for the Meloni government to imperatively provide Kiev, as soon as possible, with the costly anti-Samp-T missile system, developed by an European consortium, Eurosam, uniting MBDA Italy, MBDA France and Thales.

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Medvedchuk is the voice of reason in Ukraine politics. So of course he’s in exile.

Kiev Coaching EU On Path To Ruin – Exiled Ukrainian Politician (RT)

Kiev’s adopted policy of hatred and intransigence towards Russia is inevitably driving it into poverty, a former Ukrainian opposition-party leader, who was forced from his home nation, has concluded. Now Kiev is teaching Europe the same approach, leading to the same outcome and to possible nuclear war, he added. Viktor Medvedchuk’s political party had the biggest opposition faction in the current Ukrainian parliament. The government of President Vladimir Zelensky launched a crackdown on the group and on its leader personally. A proponent of reconciliation with Russia, he has written a keynote article published on Monday in Russian newspaper Izvestia, explaining the roots of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Both Zelensky and his predecessor Pyotr Poroshenko had been elected after the 2014 coup in Kiev on a platform of peace, and each made a U-turn after getting into office, Medvedchuk pointed out.

He argued that this shows a pattern of betrayal of the Ukrainian people by its leadership and by what he termed a “party of war.” Being enemies with Russia is against Ukraine’s economic interest, Medvedchuk asserted. Not only is Russia a major market and source of raw materials from which Ukraine can benefit, the country’s industrial sector was mostly in the east and people there, who for historic reasons have emotional ties to Russia, were antagonized by Kiev. Economic ruination is an inevitable consequence of the conflict, the politician wrote. “It is no longer Europe that teaches Ukraine politics, but Ukraine that teaches Europe how to achieve economic decline and poverty with the help of a policy of hatred and intransigence. And if Europe continues to support this policy, it will be dragged into a war, possibly a nuclear one,” he warned.

He accused Western nations of giving the incumbent Ukrainian government “triumph after triumph, while no military breakthrough is observed,” referring to the parades that generals in Ancient Rome were given after major victories. Meanwhile, the “party of peace” gets no voice either at home or in Western nations, Medvedchuk lamented. “Those who stood for peace were slandered, intimidated and repressed on incitement from the West. The Ukrainian party of peace simply did not fit into Western democracy.” “This eloquently suggests that most US and European politicians do not want any peace for Ukraine. But this does not mean at all that Ukrainians do not want peace, and Zelensky’s military triumph is more important to them than their lives and destroyed homes.” he reasoned. Only when pro-peace politicians are allowed to make their case freely can there be hope to resolve the situation, Medvedchuk believes.

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“Western nations must recognize that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine. Otherwise, it will “grow further, spilling over to Europe and other countries..”

West Sees Ukraine As Spoils Of Cold War – Medvedchuk (RT)

The West’s insistence that it won the Cold War and was entitled to the spoils at the expense of Russian interests is at the root of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, the country’s exiled opposition leader has said. Viktor Medvedchuk was forced to leave his home nation under the threat of prosecution for alleged treason. His Opposition Bloc – For Life party had the biggest faction in the Ukrainian parliament and advocated reconciliation with Russia. However, the government of President Vladimir Zelensky cracked down on it and ultimately forced many of its members into exile or silence. In an article published by Russian newspaper Izvestia on Monday, Medvedchuk analyzed the causes of the current crisis, arguing that the origin of the conflict lies in the way that the end of the Cold War is perceived by Washington and Moscow.

“The West definitely considers itself as a winner and Russia as a defeated party,” he said. Consequently, it considers ex-Soviet territories as “legitimate prey for the US and NATO” under the “woe to the conquered” principle. From Moscow’s standpoint, it simply relinquished confrontation when it decided against pursuing communism. Since the 1990s, it had sought friendly relations with Western nations, as well as economic and political integration into the EU, Medvedchuk wrote. The US plan, as evidenced by the expansion of NATO in Europe despite the objections of Moscow, was at odds with opening the door to its Cold War opponent. Ultimately, it derailed EU-Russian engagement, he argued. Conflicts like the Balkan wars are further evidence that the West had moved to gobble up the former Eastern Bloc, he continued, since they helped to “make it easier for the winner to take it over.”

The West targeted Ukraine for absorption and saw the country as part of its rightful prize, but a lot of resistance had to be overcome in order to split it from Russia, considering Kiev’s historical ties with Moscow, and the economic interest in maintaining good relations, Medvedchuk explained. Kiev antagonized the eastern part of the country, which was both economically stronger and more pro-Russian than the nationalist lands in the east, he suggested. And even then, both Zelensky and his predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, had been elected on a peace platform only to become “war party” politicians after taking office. The current conflict can be resolved only if pro-peace politicians are allowed to make their case, and Western nations must recognize that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine. Otherwise, it will “grow further, spilling over to Europe and other countries,” and has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war, he warned.

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“They go from war to war. And what should I be? An American slave?”

The president and PM have very different views.

Croatian President Weighs In On ‘Proxy War’ Against Russia (RT)

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic has claimed NATO, a military bloc of which Zagreb is a member, is waging a “proxy war” against Moscow in Ukraine. He also dismissed sanctions against Moscow as “nonsense,” adding that he does not want to be an “American slave.” Speaking to Croatian reporters in the city of Vukovar on Sunday, Milanovic said, among other things: “Washington and NATO are waging a proxy war against Russia through Ukraine,” as quoted by media outlet Istra24. He went on to argue that “The plan cannot be to remove Putin. The plan cannot be sanctions,” adding that such punitive measures are “nonsense and we will not achieve anything with them.” “They go from war to war. And what should I be? An American slave?” Croatia’s president asked rhetorically.

Milanovic voiced his frustration with the US-led military bloc’s policies in the same interview in which he tore into Croatia’s prime minister, Andrej Plenkovic, over his latest Ukraine-related remark. Speaking to news channel France 24 on Saturday, Plenkovic said the Balkan nation’s lawmakers, who in mid-December didn’t support the EU’s program to train Ukrainian military personnel in member states, have “failed to be on the right side of history.” Commenting on the remark, Milanovic, in turn, slammed the premier for bringing “disgrace” to his country “and to its democratic representatives in front of others.” The Croatian president argued that this kind of behavior reaches a low that is “the bottom of the bottom.”

As for the EU’s mission, the Croatian president warned that it effectively means that “for the first time in its history, the EU is participating in a war.” This, according to Milanovic, is “against the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.” In December 2022, Milanovic argued that having Ukrainian service members train on Croatian soil would “bring war” to the Balkan nation. He also insisted at the time that “Ukraine is not an ally,” criticizing Brussels’ decision last June to grant Kiev candidate status as “cynical.”

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“Using private counsel allows Biden to raise attorney-client privilege. [..] While that attorney-client privilege can be overcome under a “crime/fraud exception,” it adds a level of initial protection.”

Biden Uses His Lawyers To Shield His Classified Docs From The FBI (Turley)

The discovery of a fourth set of classified documents, at the Biden residence in Delaware, has further undermined the White House’s virtual mantra that the president “takes classified documents very seriously.” Putting aside the repeated movement of highly classified documents over six years, one curious element has emerged in this scandal: the use of private counsel. Not only did President Joe Biden enlist lawyers to clear out his private Washington office; he then used them — rather than security officers or the FBI — to search for additional classified documents. The initial use of lawyers is notable. While it seems a fairly pricey moving crew, Biden could argue a trove of documents might require a judgment on where they should be sent and whether they belong to Biden, the Penn Biden Center or the government.

But why was a legal team sent in six years after Biden took the documents on leaving as vice president? Were the lawyers specifically selected because they had clearances, an acknowledgment there might be classified material unlawfully housed in the office? After the fourth batch of documents was discovered this week (the third found in Delaware), Richard Sauber, referred to as the “special counsel to the president,” stressed that he has a clearance. Sauber admits the lawyers who found the first batch at the residence didn’t have clearances but says he found the later documents. It remains unclear which lawyers were involved in which discoveries, whether they had clearances and (if so) at what level. In fact, it seems to suggest Biden continued to use uncleared lawyers after his team found highly classified documents Nov. 2 in the Penn Biden office closet in Washington. That itself could be viewed as gross mishandling of classified information.

It’s strange Biden did not use security officers or the FBI to conduct further searches. The president has a host of people who regularly handle classified material. So why use the lawyers? The answer appears the same as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s emails: control. Using private counsel allows Biden to raise attorney-client privilege. Trump also used counsel, but eventually the FBI raided his home to search and remove not just classified material but documents found in boxes with that material. While that attorney-client privilege can be overcome under a “crime/fraud exception,” it adds a level of initial protection. It also allowed Biden to control the discovery and initial record of the discovery of classified information. The key to any investigation will be the chain of custody extending back to the documents’ removal in 2017 when Biden left office.

How these documents appeared in their discovered locations is known only to his lawyers. It’s a link in the chain of custody that Biden effectively controls. With Mar-a-Lago, the FBI was criticized for staging documents to be shown in the storage room. The photos were then leaked to an eager media. There will be no staged photos of documents alongside Time magazine covers for Biden. Nor were documents he housed with classified documents removed. Indeed, it’s not clear if the FBI will know what documents were stored in the same boxes. What was potentially lost is significant. Classified documents are generally supposed to be in folders with a thick, colored border and large printed classification warnings. Were some of those folders observable before they were moved? If so, anyone could tell a pile contained classified material, including the president and passersby.

Likewise, the initial discovery could show the context of surrounding material. The FBI at Mar-a-Lago carefully photographed that context and its search. Here, we’re relying on counsel to have kept such a record when most lawyers would be reluctant to do so given the risk to their client. The key is that unlike FBI agents, these lawyers are not acting on behalf of the public interest but for the president’s personal interests. If there are criminal charges, the key witnesses will be lawyers representing the president as an individual. They are more likely to minimize incriminating or embarrassing elements.

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Turley’s comment on this: “Biden counsel continues to make statements seemingly against their client’s interests. Sauber said that the lawyers who discovered the documents on Wednesday night did not have clearances…”

More Documents Marked As Classified Found At Biden’s Home – White House (CBS)

Lawyers for President Biden found more documents marked as classified at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, than previously known, the White House acknowledged in a statement Saturday. White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of documents marked as classified were found during a search of Mr. Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there. The latest disclosure is in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Mr. Biden’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, from his time as vice president. The apparent mishandling of classified documents and official records from the Obama administration are under investigation by a former U.S. attorney, Robert Hur, who was appointed as a special counsel on Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Sauber said in a statement Saturday that Mr. Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by the Department of Justice. “While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” Sauber said. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.” The Justice Department declined to comment to CBS News on the newly discovered documents. Sauber has previously said that the White House was “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”

Sauber’s statement did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of records with classified markings. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office. On Thursday, asked whether Mr. Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.” Sauber reiterated Saturday that the White House would cooperate with Hur’s investigation. Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, said his legal team has “attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”

Marco Polo

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Shifty turns.

Adam Schiff Admits Biden May Have Endangered National Security (CB)

In what is a stunning admission, California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff has admitted that President Joe Biden may have endangered national security by mishandling classified documents. He spoke to ABC “This Week” host Jonathan Karl on Sunday when the topic of the classified document scandal and Attorney General Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel was talked about. “Congressman Schiff, you were on this show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel in the case of the Trump documents. You said it was the right move. Do you feel the same way about this special counsel?” the host said. “I do think it’s the right move. The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public.

And here, I don’t think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel. And I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment,” the Congressman said. “I still would like to see Congress do its own assessment of — and receive an assessment from the intelligence community of whether there was an exposure to others of these documents, whether there was harm to national security, on the case of either set of documents with either president. But, yes, I think the special counsel was appropriately appointed,” he said. “Jonathan, if I could also, though, because my state is still trying to dig out from these terrible storms, I want to thank the president for making an emergency declaration and let Californians know that in the three most affected counties they can now apply for help in terms of rebuilding their homes and their businesses and that other counties need to report their damage as soon as possible so they can qualify for relief as well,” he said as the host brought the conversation back to the documents.

“You raise the possibility of those national security assessment. Is it possible that national security was jeopardized here as – as many, including you, raised that possibility with the Mar-a-Lago documents?” the host said. “I don’t think we can exclude the possibility without knowing more of the facts. We have asked for an assessment in the intelligence community of the Mar-a-Lago documents. I think we ought to get that same assessment of the documents found in the – in the think tank, as well as the home of President Biden. I’d like to know what these documents were. I’d like to know what the IC’s assessment is, whether there was any risk of exposure and what the harm would be and whether any mitigation needs to be done. I think that would be appropriate and consistent with what we requested in the case of Mar-a-Lago,” the Congressman said.

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Well, someone did.

Did The Deep State Turn on Biden? (Roach)

In spite of his manifest unpopularity and refusal even to campaign, Biden was installed as president in 2020. Having rarely met an actual Biden supporter, Trump voters were skeptical and angry. The extended recounts, unceremonious dismissal of legal challenges, and videos of disappearing ballots, along with strident denunciations of “election deniers,” did not reassure anyone. Later revelations showed the coordinated way government officials, the media, NGOs, billionaires, and others conspired to “fortify” the 2020 election. Biden governed as he ran: mostly hidden from the public, beholden to donors and party elders, doing as little as possible. This seemed acceptable for a while, since it allowed the various constituent parts of the government to do what they wanted with little interference.

Everyone knows Biden’s never been that sharp and seems more decrepit than ever, that his vice president is even dumber than he is, and that he’s not really running anything. But this is all a feature, not a bug, for the cabal that brought him to office. For them, the more independence they have from oversight, the better. Lately, it seems there’s a disturbance in force. Biden and his allies have continued their vendetta against Trump, exposing his tax returns and raiding his home for possessing documents he supposedly owed the National Archives. This did not go over as well as Attorney General (and all-around hack) Merrick Garland anticipated, and it seems Garland and the January 6 Committee have each decided to scale back their demands. This is why the recent exposure of top secret documents in Biden’s old office, his garage, and a mysterious third location suggests something is afoot.

We went from a Monday disclosure to a special counsel being appointed on Thursday. Nothing like this happens this quickly unless it is by design. There are, of course, ways to deal with this situation that do not involve public exposure. Couldn’t Biden or his staff order some FBI agents or White House people to pick them up and take them to wherever they’re supposed to be stored? It’s in the news because somehow his lawyers found the documents and reported them before the story could go through White House channels. And, lawyers being lawyers, they followed the street-lawyer rule that if someone has to go to jail, make sure it’s your client and not you. Concerned about individual culpability for obstruction or mishandling documents, they made this hot potato someone else’s problem as fast as possible.

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The Jacobin is one of the Dems’ staunchest supporters. Until now.

Turns Out Hillary Clinton, Not Russian Bots, Lost the 2016 Election (Jacobin)

Amid the generalized media crack-up that surrounded the 2016 presidential election, the bogeyman of “Russian bots” quickly became a load-bearing concept. A Russia-based social media campaign, or so it was said, had saturated sites like Twitter with fake accounts and, in doing so, helped to swing the election for Donald Trump. Becoming axiomatic in liberal circles, this story soon took on a life of its own. It’s since played a prominent role in mainstream media narratives of the 2016 election, been the subject of highly publicized congressional hearings, and also loomed large in the wider global discourse about “fake news.” That the Russian government preferred Trump to Hillary Clinton and that Russia-connected actors engaged in digital skulduggery related to the election are not really in dispute.

Much of the mainstream discussion around Russian bots, however, has been premised on unexamined assumptions about the scale and effectiveness of these efforts. Powerful states including the United States, after all, regularly engage in the likes of online propaganda and sock-puppeting campaigns. Whether they have a more than negligible impact on real world events, electoral and otherwise, is another question. It’s notable, then, that a new analysis published by the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University finds no evidence whatsoever that Russia-based Twitter disinformation had any meaningful impact on voter behavior in 2016. In place of the terrifying bot army menace that’s periodically been invoked, the researchers instead detail an enterprise with minimal reach or influence, and one overwhelmingly concentrated among partisan Republicans already inclined to vote for Trump.

They estimate that as many as thirty-two million US Twitter users may have been “exposed” to tweets from Russia-aligned accounts over the eight-month period preceding the 2016 election.” In numerical terms that may sound like a lot, but it actually isn’t when you factor in the sheer volume of posts and information encountered by social media users on a daily basis. As the report puts it: While, on average, respondents were exposed to roughly 4 posts from Russian foreign influence accounts per day in the last month of the election campaign, they were exposed to an average of 106 posts on average per day from national news media and 35 posts per day from US politicians. In other words, respondents were exposed to 25 times more posts from national news media and 9 times as many posts from politicians than those from Russian foreign influence accounts.

Sheer exposure, of course, doesn’t even necessarily amount to influence. Like advertising, politically motivated content can functionally be background noise if it fails to reach particular audiences or in turn doesn’t have an impact on those that it does. In both respects, the study is quite unequivocal: not only were Russian Twitter efforts dwarfed by posts from media and politicians, but actual exposure to them was highly concentrated within a subset of partisan conservatives: Results . . . show that the amount of exposure depends substantially on users’ self-identified partisanship: those who identify as “Strong Republicans” were exposed to roughly nine times as many posts from Russian foreign influence accounts than were those who identify as Democrats or Independents.

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Musk Says ZeroHedge Did “Nothing Warranting Suspension”

‘Twitter Files’ Expose Big Pharma Bullying (ZH)

Today’s Twitter Files drop contains several notable pieces of evidence. First, that lobbyists for the pharmaceutical industry launched a ‘massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents/IP for new covid-related medicine,” according to The Intercept’s Lee Fang. As part of this effort, lobbying group BIO “wrote to the newly elected Biden admin, demanding the U.S. gov sanction any country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low cost covid medicine or vaccines.” Of note, Pfizer and BioNTech raked in $37 billion in revenue in 2021 alone from the COVID-19 vaccine, while Moderna made $17.7 billion the same year (and has recently announced a plan to hike the price of the Covid-19 vaccine by approximately 400%). BioNTech, which developed the Pfizer vaccine, “reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic low cost vaccines.”

According to Fang, “Twitter’s reps responded quickly to the pharma request,” while “A lobbyist in Europe asked the content moderation team to monitor the accounts of Pfizer, AstraZeneca & of activist hashtags like #peoplesvaccine.” Meanwhile, the “fake accounts” flagged by the pharmaceutical companies for action were real people – one of whom Fang spoke with on the phone. “For more than two years, a global movement has been speaking out against pharmaceutical greed and demanding that everyone, everywhere has the tools to combat pandemics,” said Maaza Seyoum, a campaigner for the People’s Vaccine Alliance. “Whatever nasty tricks companies and governments pull,” she continued, “we cannot and will not be silenced.” Second, ‘Pfizer & Moderna’s lobbying group, BIO, fully funded a special content moderation campaign designed by a contractor called Public Good Projects (PGP), which worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid “misinformation.”‘ according to Fang.

BIO funded the PGP campaign, “Stronger,” to the tune of $1.275 million. Its focus? Helping Twitter ‘create content moderation bots,’ selecting which public health accounts would be verified, and helping to crowdsource content takedowns. Of note, the Moderna/Pfizer-funded campaign included regular emails to Twitter officals with takedown and verification requests. “Here’s an example of those types of emails that went straight to Twitter’s lobbyists and content moderators. Many focused on @zerohedge, which was suspended.” Fang includes a screencap of an email with two excel spreadsheets containing said requests.

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One child policy fallout. Like trying to turn an oil tanker around. Population to almost halve by 2100.

China Records First Population Decline In 60 Years (RT)

The population declined in 2022 to 1.411 billion, down some 850,000 people from the previous year, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced during a Tuesday briefing on annual data. Analysts said the decline was the first since 1961 during the great famine triggered by former leader Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward. “The population will likely trend down from here in coming years. This is very important, with implications for potential growth and domestic demand,” said Zhiwei Zhang, president and chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management. The birth rate also fell to a record low of 6.77 births per 1,000, down from 7.52 a year earlier and the lowest level since the founding of Communist China in 1949. Some 9.56 million babies were born, compared with 10.62 million in 2021 – despite a push from the government to encourage more married couples to have children.


The new data came alongside the announcement of one of China’s worst annual economic performances in nearly half a century, with the economy expanding by just 3% for the year, far below the government’s target, underscoring the steep economic challenges the country faces as its labor force shrinks and its retired demographic grows. The demographic crisis, which is expected to have an increasing impact on Chinese growth in the years to come, has been a key concern for policymakers. Beijing scrapped its decades-long and highly controversial “one child” policy in 2015, after realizing the restrictive policy had contributed to a rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce that could severely distress the country’s economic and social stability. To arrest the falling birth rate, the Chinese government announced in 2015 that it would allow married couples to have two children. But after a brief uptick in 2016, the national birth rate has continued to fall.

Read more …

“At least the Manson Murders were covered by corporate media. We all shared a similar experience.”

The Black Album (Trish Wood)

Later I bought the book, Helter Skelter, written by the man who prosecuted Charlie. But as an adult and a true crime reporter it was a story I steered clear of, never once accepting a production role in any of the many retellings. Like Didion, I remained skittish about it. I couldn’t make sense of Sharon Tate’s astonishing beauty being annihilated and the peace and love ethos of rich Hollywood hippies reduced to feral human remains – for nothing. The True Detective-type photos from Cielo Drive are images that still haunt. So, why am I so gripped by the revelations that Big Tech, legacy media and for sure the government actually silenced the voices of experts honestly trying to stop the unfolding disaster of lockdowns? Why does this feel like a moment as significant as those era-ending murders in the pretty house on a quiet SoCal Drive?

A team of independent journos is uncovering irrefutable proof that our well being was not paramount in the minds of those who peddled a fake consensus to invoke lockdowns — in my view — the most ruinous public health mistake in modern history. Government, its public health officials, legacy media, and even the medical journals were more into narrative stitching than truth and actually saving lives. The stories of governmental and scientific fraud and perfidy are all over Substack and Twitter and Elon is being hailed as a hero — as he should be, despite what my friend CJ Hopkins said on the podcast last week. But corporate media are running their usual smear-games — abdicating their responsibility to their audience — in order to hide their own complicity in a policy scandal that dwarfs all others.

In the meantime, we are on our own, facing an ugly truth about the people who govern us and the agencies they exploit to stay in power. Everything we thought was true about this power dynamic is a lie. At least the Manson Murders were covered by corporate media. We all shared a similar experience.

Read more …

Trojan Horse.

Twitter thread.

There Is Nothing Green About Green Energy (Pettimore)

As a miner for 40 years I have worked in various mines around the world. Gold, platinum, copper, coal, lead, zinc, oil and salt. I’m going to tell you something, and here it is. We will destroy the earth in the name of “Green Energy” Follow along and I will explain. MiningWatch Canada is estimating that “[Three] billion tons of mined metals and minerals will be needed to power the energy transition” – a “massive” increase especially for six critical minerals: lithium, graphite, copper, cobalt, nickel and rare earth minerals Over the next 30 years 7.5 billion of us, we will consume more minerals than the last 70,000 years or the past 500 generations, which is more than all of the 108 billion humans who have ever walked the Earth.

Mining requires the extraction of solid ores, often after removing vast amounts of overlying rock. Then the ore must be processed, creating an enormous quantity of waste – about 100 billion tonnes a year, more than any other human-made waste stream. Purifying a single tonne of rare earths requires using at least 200 cubic meters of water, which then becomes polluted with acids and heavy metals. On top of that, imagine the destruction and energy required to obtain these essential metals:
18,740 pounds of purified rock to produce 2.2 pounds of vanadium
35,275 pounds of ore for 2.2 pounds of cerium
110,230 pounds of rock for 2.2 pounds of gallium
2,645,550 pounds of ore to get 2.2 pounds of lutecium

Also staggering amounts of ore are needed for other metals. By 2035, demand is expected to double for germanium; quadruple for tantalum; and quintuple for palladium. The scandium market could increase nine-fold, and the cobalt market by a factor of 24. (Marscheider-Wiedemann 2016 ‘raw materials for emerging technologies’. The potential demand for rare metals is exponential. We are already consuming over two billion tonnes of metals every year — the equivalent of more than 500 Eiffel Towers a day. There is nothing refined about mining. It involves crushing rock, and then using a concoction of chemical reagents such as sulphuric and nitric acid, a long and highly repetitive process using many different procedures to obtain a rare-earth concentrate close to 100% purity.

Read more …

“The problem is that we don’t have a discussion on population: we have a clash of absolutes.”

The Age of Exterminations: How to Kill a Few Billion People (Ugo Bardi)

With 8 billion people alive on Earth, it may be reasonable to believe that the planet is becoming a little crowded. Nevertheless, we should not neglect the opposite opinion: that we have resources and technologies sufficient to keep 8 billion people alive and reasonably happy, and perhaps even more. Neither position can be proven, nor disproven. The future will tell us who was right but, in the meantime, it is perfectly legitimate to propose that population growth should be slowed down by birth planning. The problem is that we don’t have a discussion on population: we have a clash of absolutes. The position that sees overpopulation as a problem has been thoroughly demonized over the past decades and, still today, you cannot even mention the subject without being immediately branded as a would-be exterminator.

It happened to Bill Gates, to the Club of Rome, and to many others who dared suggest that the world would be a better place if the human population were to stabilize at levels lower than the present one. The demonization trend is, of course, a knee-jerk reaction: the people who propose population planning would be simply horrified at being accused of supporting mass exterminations. But note also that demonization starts from a real problem. Exterminations DID happen in the recent past, and they were carried out largely on the basis of a wrong evaluation of the overpopulation problem. During the Nazi era in Germany, the idea that Europe was overpopulated was common and it was widely believed that the “Lebensraum, “living space” available was insufficient for the German people. The result was a series of exterminations correctly considered the most heinous crimes in human history.

How was that possible? The Germans of that time were the grandfathers of the Germans of today, who are horrified at thinking of what their grandparents did or at least did not oppose. But, for the Germans of those times, killing the Untermenschen, the inferior races, seemed to be the right thing to do, given the vision of the world that was proposed to them and that they had accepted. The Germans fell into a trap called “utilitarianism.” It is one of those principles that are so embedded in our way of thinking that we don’t even realize that it exists. But it does, and it causes enormous damage. In principle, utilitarianism wouldn’t seem to be such a bad idea. It is a rational calculation of the consequences of taking or not taking a certain action based on the principle of generating the maximum good for the maximum number of people. So defined, it looks both sensible and harmless. But that’s the theory. What we have is a good illustration of the age-old principle that “in theory, theory and practice are the same thing. In practice, they are not.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Relativity
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614947859245240325

 

 

Huxley

 

 

This should make a few doctors think.

 

 

Hairdresser
https://twitter.com/i/status/1614661494947340289

 

 

 

 

Cleaner shrimps

 

 

Blue whale
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615041486331969584

 

 


A hummingbird lays back and “relaxes” after drinking flower nectar. Source: Rahul Singh

 

 

Skippy

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle January 17 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 61 total)
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  • #126338

    Hasui Kawase Mimhae Pavilion, Kyongju, Korea 1940   • How The Davos Elite Took Back Control (Fazi) • Global Political Elite Skipping Davos (RT) •
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 17 2023]

    #126341
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Word press won’t post?

    #126342
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Splitting posts:

    Top news: Punctured the echo bubble of “There is no debate”. Reuters runs article that vaccine can cause strokes. –Rarely and randomly, but that is the first sign of backtracking, and as we know, it first becomes “seldom”, then “Sometimes” then “Occasionally” then “Often” then “Everybody always knew.”

    I’m not holding my breath: they’re saying there is a data anomaly that most vaxxers die on day 21. That’s it. At that rate of admission we’re in for 5 more years. Yet Reuters covered it and no one was fired.

    “the White House is potentially preparing to declare an epidemic of sudden death and that they might blame long COVID …”

    Of course. That was always the plan. And from talking to medical people it’s going to work wonderfully. They remain data-free, getting their medical reports from know liars and idiots like TikTok and Medical Administrators. And they will die with their patients.

    BBC windows. Wow. How do they get away with that and not get shot? The Ministry of Love is right next to the Ministry of Truth.

    Symptom list: Lack of blood oxygen over long periods (meaning not a few minutes) makes the heart struggle also without oxygen to work and does cause heart attacks. That may not be related to clots, etc in the usual way. I believe this is like if you strangle someone, they may technically have a heart attack instead. The Doctors can give more clarity on this.

    “also known as multistakeholder governance.”

    That states it better than I did this week. We’re going to have put up with this garbage a lot, so might as well have a clear picture of it. Seems they have abandoned Build Back Better so we outsiders are winning, making them have to change word-weapons all the time, after they have invested fortunes into their ads and development.

    A good example of this I hadn’t thought of entirely before is Mr. Gates, who as a “Stakeholder” can become a doctor, and Mr. Powell, as a “Stakeholder” was expected to become an activist and environmentalist. That is, it also allows and encourages, actually demands and requires, that smart people act far, far outside their expertise. I’d say like Van der Leiden not knowing KIA “Men” from “Officers” but she was German DefSec and actually SHOULD have known, except that she’s a mouth-breathing, glue-sniffing moron that puts Miss Truss to shame and never heard the word “Officer” in her official duties before.

    Translation of smart people outside their area of knowledge? “We just make s—t up!” “All for my pals, none for you.”

    He’s speaking of BlackRock and Vanguard, the interlocking boards? I believe BlackRock has lost half their assets under management this year? PS to nothing: doesn’t the name “BlackRock” come from the “Black Sun” beliefs of the Nazi occult they came from? That’s the patch.
    12Ray
    If you listen, you can see that “Black Hole Sun” pop up all over, and usually promoted.

    On the flip side Powell seems to NOT be bailing out Larry Fink and the Black Sun, which IS news, but does seem to be bailing out Switzerland. …Because Switzerland is now the 52nd state? Unclear. What did he get in exchange? Free ski vacation?

    “Global Political Elite Skipping Davos (RT)”

    The goal was to move from (barely) accountable governments to completely unaccountable corporations, well-armed with private armies like the East India Company. Or the Bay. PMs are only middle-management anyway.

    “Only when pro-peace politicians are allowed to make their case freely can there be hope to resolve the situation, Medvedchuk believes.”

    That was true of everything. Covid, medicine, justice, climate. But the only approach is no debate, which means they lost, and they know if it gets out, if they have to represent, they will definitely lose. Why else use force? Use expensive force when you would definitely win and everyone would agree with you anyway? No. Only when you’ve already lost is force and censorship, ad hominem and no data.

    “They go from war to war. And what should I be? An American slave?”

    I think that was a quote from Muhammad Ali. Or the sentiment is at least. They sent him to prison too.

    “The initial use of lawyers is notable.”

    It is. Just because you’re a lawyer doesn’t mean you’re authorized to read classified material. So how could they “Go through it” if they didn’t already have Presidential-level clearance? I assumed this was why they had to use the FBI, by bringing in someone who was at least plausibly cleared. As he said, then he knew there was classified material or he wouldn’t have asked them? Okay, why not burn or return it without comment? It’s only in the news because they looked.

    Hunter’s 459 crimes, including directly working for Russia and China? “No he didn’t.” Problem solved. See what I did there?

    “Did The Deep State Turn on Biden? (Roach)”

    They need to swap him on the 21st, the day his replacement can run for two terms after. Right on schedule. Oh heavens, citizen, there’s noting shifty about this: this is how it’s done now.

    “the bogeyman of “Russian bots” quickly became a load-bearing concept.”

    Why? We all knew it was far-fetched right away, and disproven in weeks as Twitter came out with the ad buy stats. (Examples of Russian clicks? “Trouble with masturbation? Grab Jesus and we’ll beat it together”) So why was it “Load bearing” according to you? Who was it “load bearing” for? What “load” was it bearing? It was being borne on a falsehood, so how come you didn’t catch it for us readers, as is your only job?

    Aaaaand as they say, $30k in Russian clicks about dinosaurs overturned $6 Billion in Hillary’s election. Clearly she doesn’t deserve to be President if she’s that bad at hiring the right people. One used Toyota to that click farm would have won the whole United States. According to her.

    “Public Good Projects (PGP), which worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid “misinformation.”

    Misinformation that vaccines can cause strokes, which according to Reuters/Pfizer is true? That kind of “misinformation”? And is that the “misinformation” that Davos intends to prevent?

    “Population to almost halve by 2100. “China Records First Population Decline In 60 Years (RT)

    But, but: Science! Malthus said. Humans are the virus. We need population control. Exponential curves: There’s no such thing as cycles. My white lab coat I put on to talk about this. Can’t you see my coat? All lies. Trees don’t grow to the sky. No one updated their data. Club of Rome wrong again. Japan does not take over the whole world in 1989.

    Despite that all this is true, all of it is well known for decades: “Fewer: … the New Demography of Depopulation” 2005 it was too much fun to kill people anyway. Oppress them and steal their stuff anyway. Although all us Davos wonks up at the top already knew population was dropping anyway. And therefore the “Green New Deal” was unnecessary garbage anyway. And didn’t apply to the United States specifically.
    CO2byCountry
    https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/04/Global-CO2-emissions-by-region-since-1751-768×538.png
    U.S. CO2 emissions have been dropping. We’re the one nation you DON’T need to talk to. Clearly China needs to transfer money to US under Copenhagen, not the other way around. Right?

    “the most ruinous public health mistake in modern history.”

    Yes and also caused hyper/high inflation. We told them both things. Those things were already in all the textbooks and medical guidelines. They specifically rebelled AGAINST their own laws and guidelines to (illegally) do this thing we said wouldn’t work, didn’t work when they started it, and never worked anywhere in hindsight. WHY? And it’s still being protected, not discussed openly. WHY?

    “There Is Nothing Green about Green Energy (Pettimore)”

    You can do it without anywhere near as much destruction but it costs a lot more. Point is well made.

    “we have resources and technologies sufficient to keep 8 billion people alive and reasonably happy, and perhaps even more. Neither position can be proven, nor disproven.”

    That’s provably false, unfortunately. OBVIOUSLY we have the resources to keep at least 8B alive because we’re doing it right now. And we’re not entirely destitute and at the wall, so very likely a lot more, 1B? 2B? It also depends mostly on what “standard of living” you consider acceptable. …Quotes because most of the use is #Oppoiste to standard of living and is in fact misery and waste. Most use is Amazon circling the world and soccer moms shopping, 2h commutes. Meanwhile, People are happy up at the lake house, with half the sq ft and a wood stove. They’re unhappy in Toronto and NY and London. But one uses 2-3x resources of the other.

    Anyway, 8B is provably false as the upper limit, obviously. We haven’t tried to tap Russia and Iran’s massive energy, provably. We are misusing farms and shutting them down, provably. And we are paving the most excellent farmland coast to coast in NJ and Illinois, provably. Reverse all that and we can maybe take a guess at a real upper limit.

    Bromelain New solutions appear every day. No one will take them. They’ve already chosen denial. If they weren’t in denial they % wouldn’t have vaxxed in the first place.

    Outside news:

    “Liz Truss’s proposals for unfunded tax cuts spooked markets. “

    Sure. They said they’d lower taxes, the whole economy panicked and sold. I guess if they’d doubled taxes, the economy would have boomed. Pull the other one.

    “MSM Outlets Demand To Know Who Guaranteed Bankman-Fried’s $250 Million Bond”

    A Quarter-Billion dollars. Paid in 24 hours. I’m sure than can be done on a Professor’s salary. The real story here is that allegedly the media is curious. I have my doubts.

    “World Economic Forum Invents New Word to Describe the Extreme Chaos Gripping Our Planet: Polycrisis”

    Yes, but we already have a name for that: it’s THEM.

    “US NatGas Prices Rise As Models Suggest ‘Polar Vortex To Unload On US’”

    The polar cap slipped off on the American side and saved Europe from ground-freezing cold AGAIN? What are the odds? Unless they can affect weather. And if the can affect weather – and golly gee Batman, get so lucky all the time – then the “Weather extremes” are indeed caused by man, on purpose. Just using a different tool. The patents have been filed. Look them up.

    “Mayor Says NYC Being “Undermined”, Has “No More Room” for Illegal Immigrants”

    Why does he hate brown people? Where’s the Justice? “All humans are legal.”

    #126343
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Are Climate Cultists really that desperate? Yes, yes they are.
    You see, the truth about climate change is beginning to spread to the masses, and the debunking of anti-carbon propaganda is picking up momentum. Here are the facts:
    The average global temperature is not climbing to dangerous levels. The Earth’s temps have increased according to the NOAA by less than 1°C in the past century.”

    https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

    No. Wait. Stop. At this rate it will take 100 years for the sea to rise 6 inches. Then the whole planet won’t be exactly like it was when I was a kid in 1956. No Beatles. WHY DO YOU HATE THE BEATLES?

    Life is change. The end of change is death. Let it change. My one remaining sorrow is the seas will NOT rise and take out N.Y. and L.A.

    Temp
    https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_mobile/public/inline-images/Global-Temp-History1.png?itok=cxuAFdua

    Look at that chart! We are way too cold!!! We need to heat up by 5°c right away!!! Especially in Canada. Only then can we stop burning carbon to heat houses and stuff. Think how environmental that would be!

    Anyway, this article is about the overnight and instant realization (SCIENCE!!!™™™™) that we can make profit on 5x the U.S. price of gas if we use the idiot greenies and a bunch of whore non-scientists to fabricate whole cloth lies that natural gas stoves have any effect on health at all. And the people will believe it! I saw it was on the blue square!!!
    And so they DID do that. Now gas stoves in the U.S. are all banned, and we can sell U.S. gas to the idiot short-bus Europeans, who blew up their own gas in a fateful wish to die, at 5x the profit! AND we can kill all the poor people in the ‘States with, you know poverty. And that especially kills black people. Are you with me yet? Can I get a hallelujah? Amen brother.

    There is no level of aggressive mockery and lampooning, criticism and calling them the racist, sexist, anti-science, reality hijacking, mass murdering, baby strangling psychopaths they are could possibly deliver the point. The only way to really deliver the derision and message adequately is to hang them on crosses every 100 yards from Staten Island all the way to Oakland as a stiff warning to others. It is attempted mass murder for money, after all. Of children, widows, and poor people, selected by race. And recruiting a child army – IN grade school – to go strangle them for you. Congratulations.

    We all know it, I was just giving my personal expression a go here.

    Contrast? “Exxon Mobil accurately predicted warming since 1970s, study finds” –MSNBC

    Accurately predicted the warming that didn’t happen according to the Climate.gov? ‘Cuz one of those words is being used wrong.

    “ Biden Calls for Two Weeks of Not Cooking on Gas Stoves to Flatten the Curve” –BBee

    Yeah, we’ve seen that before. Trust us.

    Yes, they should have had pictures of Meseko’s hill, but it was hard enough to find the original article or any reference. Wouldn’t want people to make food in Africa or nothin’, they might not buy baby formula from Nestle.

    #126344
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #126345
    Oroboros
    Participant

    One child policy fallout. Population to almost halve by 2100.

    • China Records First Population Decline In 60 Years (RT)

    The Amish, a most resilient group, didn’t get the Memo:

    .

    #126346
    zerosum
    Participant

    Words to reflect/to make you think

    vendetta against Trump
    Spoils of war
    getting their medical reports from know liars and idiots
    twitter files

    #126347
    Oroboros
    Participant

    They also DIDN’T get the Death Quackcine

    #126348
    zerosum
    Participant

    what “standard of living” you consider acceptable.

    Having a useable keyboard
    Not having/needing to wear mitts when using a keyboard

    #126349
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center. The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030. “

    I initially did not like Ed Dowd because he worked for BlackRock for years

    Working for a snake like BlackRock is not a Plus for one’s credibility but Ed’s research and data presentation speak for themselves.

    BlackRock is still the Devil’s Baby Batter

    Corrupt Volodymyr Zelensky Brings in Globalist BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to Coordinate Ukraine’s Money Laundering

    https://jdrucker.substack.com/p/corrupt-volodymyr-zelensky-brings

    Blackrock, Blackwater, will bring death where ever we go.

    .

    #126350
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “Who needs the Babylon Bee when real life brings us unfathomable news? Such has been the case throughout 2022 and 2023 looks like more of the same as the globalist elite cabal continues emerging from the shadows to flex their muscles out in the open.

    The latest round of “You Can’t Make This Up” has Ukraine’s corrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky playing perfect puppet for the globalists by bringing in woke financial juggernaut BlackRock to coordinate their massive money laundering scheme, a program referred to by corporate media as “recovery efforts.”

    #126351
    The Markster
    Participant

    Started the Kisin video but had to turn it off after his ridiculous rallying cry, apparently made in the context of fighting woke culture, that Putin was an “enemy” of the West. Perhaps NATO and Blackrock fans will find his accent and perspective worthy of their attention, but personally I ain’t got no time for that.

    The Trish Wood piece was very powerful, and only confirmed my suspicions about Tarantino. Unrepentant, fat and happy, our culture paints a cool, self-affirming mask on the absurdly decadent, empty, wasteful lifestyles that we built on ruthless globalist looting and plunder here in “freedom and democracy/support our troops” land.

    For many years now I have suspected that there is poetic justice, and even perhaps a small kernel of goodness, in the way our society is self-destructing. Too bad that in doing so we had to take it out on the toddlers, teenage athletes and frail elderly in a senseless, banal killing spree, but I suppose that is how these things go.

    And by the grace of God we all have another chance today to make amends. To embrace our friends and children in love and humility, to shave our heads in solidarity, to see and give thanks for all the stupendous beauty of our fellow creatures in this amazing world.

    Love to all today in this courageous online space. ☮️❤️

    #126352
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The composition of the WEF’s board is also very revealing, including Laurence D. Fink, CEO of Blackrock, David M. Rubenstein, co-chairman of the Carlyle Group, and Mark Schneider, CEO of Nestlé.

    Is that the Nestlé that bribed the local politicians to sell them the water supply of Flint, Mitchigan, leaving the people without decent water, all so that Nestlé could sell the bottled water at a 4000% profit? These are the people making a better world for us? Ha ha, the WEF is a dangerous cabal of terrorists, they steal, that is their role in life, all of them with their fancy jets, they will be round your place shortly to steal.

    #126353
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Wonderful post, Markster.

    Smiley Faces

    #126354
    aspnaz
    Participant

    In what is a stunning admission, California Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff has admitted that President Joe Biden may have endangered national security by mishandling classified documents.

    A “stunning admission” from a person who is a habitual liar. I don’t think that counts as news, in fact it counts as BAU. Who cares what the shits says, his mouth is a sewer of lies, it is insulting for you to even suggest that we would give him any credibility, any worth.

    #126355
    Oroboros
    Participant


    #126356
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    I understand this is simplistic (some here might say reductive) but this mental image helps me navigate the current environment.

    Similar to the “It’s turtles all the way down!” story, I see the current era of (a) cheap/free money, and (b) monopolies as creating the incentives for people to lucratively engage in non-productive activities.

    The image is a productive worker being more-and-more bowed down as (Black)rocks and (Black)stones are piled on his/her back. These further weights claim to be adding the value of “efficiency”, but that is simply reducing productive employees and forcing those who remain to do more.

    Last night I stopped at a big box hardware store for $400 in materials and had to ‘self-checkout’. (Actually, the kid manning that area checked me out because I threatened, nicely, to abandon my cart).

    As an independent carpenter, I occasionally buy Festool equipment for the quality. Reduced natural gas to Germany has me re-thinking purchases of German tools. But, more importantly, I had a broken tool and contacted the company and actually got to two real humans. However both told me I had to go online and “create an account” to get service. Sorry, one of the things I expect with higher price is a higher level of service. No more Fein, no more Festool.

    I’m not trying to complain here, I’m making an observation, and then “voting with my feet”. I haven’t “quiet quit” yet, but I’m working hard to decrease my dependency and footprint.

    Over-administration in academics…over-administration in healthcare, Vax mandates, green energy mandates, war mandates etc

    All these ‘rocks’ and ‘stones’ continuing to be piled upon us. (Thanks for the upload info Phoenix!)

    #126357

    The “America” video points out what AI offerings don’t have- inspiration. While it could easily take the song and put it in a minor key, it can’t come up with the idea to do so. It lacks creativity. It cannot invent things- it can only take a new thing created by a human and twist it into some other AI infested thing.

    A demon rises from the bits,
    Resplendent in its charms,
    And like magicians, twists our wits
    While causing endless harms.

    The Black Sun. I haven’t read much about the origins of this symbol, but I’ll guess that it represents the eclipsed sun. The prediction of eclipses had to be an astonishing indicator of the powers of observation and calculation. (Science.)
    In science fiction, the scientist comes up with the formula, whereupon those who hope to exploit it steal it and kill the scientist. Or lock him up in the laboratory…

    #126359
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    @ Dr D – I believe BlackRock has lost half their assets under management this year?
    ———————————

    What’s not to like about BlackRock? Robo-Editor into my in-Box this a.m.:

    – Healthy 4Q inflows despite challenging market environment
    – On January 13, BlackRock reported 4Q22 adjusted earnings of $8.93 per share, down from $10.68 a year earlier but above the consensus of $8.07. Revenue declined 15% on a 14% drop in average AUM.
    – Despite the challenging market environment, long-term net inflows were healthy at $146 billion, with particular help from fixed-income products amid a higher interest rate environment.
    – The company took a restructuring charge in 4Q to eliminate 500 positions, as it deals with continued depressed asset values, but expected headcount overall to remain above year-earlier levels.
    – On valuation, we believe that BLK should trade at a premium to large-cap financial stocks given the company’s above-average operating margins, stable long-term asset inflows, and history of product innovation. Our revised target price is $850.

    F.S.

    #126360
    kultsommer
    Participant

    As for the Croatian shaky stance on their own NATO membership there, in the Balkans, is a very blunt saying:
    “She wants to get f****d without penetration”, as an allusion to a young woman saving her virginity for the marriage.

    #126361
    Oroboros
    Participant

    DESTROYING MONSTERS
    By Helmholtz Smith

    DESTROYING MONSTERS BY HELMHOLTZ SMITH

    .

    “…An America of war all the time everywhere, of tent cities and full jails, of open borders, disappeared manufacturing, opiates, misery, poverty, corruption. An America with endless money to spend abroad but none to spend at home. (The hundred billion dollars dumped into Ukraine would give a $200,000 house to every one of the estimated half million homeless in the USA!) An America failing, no longer the American they loved, served and believed in. The Twitter revelations show some of the activities of this enemy embedded in the American polity. It’s very late and many fear that it is too late.

    How to get this leech off America’s back? Voting can’t make much difference if both parties are manipulated. Is the voting system itself corrupted? Can the judicial system be trusted? Special counsels who report when it’s too late to matter? The managed media? Some may still believe in these things but the people I’m talking about don’t any more.

    They can only see one way that the power of this internal enemy can be broken – complete and utter defeat. Defeat that cannot be ignored, cannot be explained away, defeat too big and too obvious for the obedient mass media to bury….”

    #126362
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “…And that is why these people want Russia to win. They don’t necessarily like Russia or Putin or dislike Ukraine – it has little to do with either. It’s because they see this as the opportunity for the humiliating defeat that will shatter the power of the internal enemy. …”

    #126363
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    @Oroboros #126362 – that is precisely how I feel about the whole Ukraine situation. The conjoined political and financial systems of the ‘West’ cannot be fixed from within because the level of corruption and incompetence has reached saturation point. It’s an irredeemable situation and, I feel, the longer it staggers on the more damage it will do and the less likely it is that there will be enough of the world left after the inevitable collapse for the survivors to pick themselves up and build something different.

    I welcome the fact that rapid change is being forced upon the post-WWII settlement from the outside and hope that the hard times ahead will clear the deadwood.

    #126364
    jb-hb
    Participant

    After WW1, one of their top generals – I want to say either Hindenberg or Ludendorf – did a post-war analysis. What could they have done differently to avoid disaster? The answer? An exaggerated version of how they managed conquered areas in the East, only more so. Make the entire country into nothing but a war machine in every aspect. Make every single thing in the country exist for that purpose.

    Naturally, even those fighting wars for their country should give SOME priority to their country being something worth fighting for. If nothing else because when countries become not worth fighting for, you lose wars.

    The solution would have been for the damn Kaiser to not go on #$%)(&ing VACATION during the crisis between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, but instead, stand oppressively close behind Franz Josef sitting at the negotiating table and hiss in his ear:

    “You TAKE this unimaginably good deal the Serbs are offering. You #$%#&ing well TAKE IT or I will fill every important diplomatic position with Bismark protégés, make an alliance with Russia, and leave your rotting empire to collapse. Pick up that #%&ing pen. SIGN.”

    On 26 July, after reading Serbia’s counteroffer, Wilhelm commented:
    “But that eliminates any reason for war”
    “every cause for war falls to the ground”
    Serbia has made “a capitulation of the most humiliating kind”

    I kind of understand the reasoning behind Germany going ahead on a path to war with Russia. They were worried about Russian improvements to their army, the rapid expansion of their railways, and the strengthening of their economy. The rationale was “we can’t beat them in the future, so we’d better beat them now”

    Er, how about pursue the policy of Bismark instead? Or maybe just somehow bear to live with a nearby country that you cannot easily beat?

    An obsession with methods over goals.

    Hey, I’m a rentier. Wouldn’t it be great if I turned into, like, a SUPER-rentier and turned the entire planet into a subscription service?

    The world has problems. My guys prognosticated problems in the future. What if we fixed them all by turning from rentiers into super-rentiers and made everyone pay me? I’ve considered a bunch of different options. To me, I cannot put my finger on why, but I just get a really good feeling about that super-rentier solution. Better than about any other one proposed. Let’s go with that one.

    The 2000’s seem like a tour de force in adopting a method and assuming total application of a method is the solution. One weird trick. I’ve got a massive rentier operation going. Surely making EVERYTHING into that is the solution! It’s the way things SHOULD be and it’s frustrating to see parts of the world that aren’t that.

    I agree with Boiling Frog one obvious result is too many administrators, project managers, and middle managers.

    #126365
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Talking about “voting with feet”…

    I was picking up lunch for 2 kids yesterday at McDonalds. I decided to use their app. I declined allowing the McD app to location services (I.e. my geolocation data.) — it is no great trouble to have to input my zip code into the app to find the intended location for the order. I arrived onsite, and touched the button in the app to indicate arrival. I received an error message, and a code to give the restaurant. Apparently, the McD app does not transmit the order to the restaurant until it receives confirmation from the geolocation services on the device that placed the order that the device has arrived, with no regard to whether or not the user touches the arrival button. With great irritation I turned on location services for the app — then turned them back off a few minutes later. I told the McD manager that the app was pointless — I saved no time by utilizing the app — I was not frustrated by him, nor his staff, I told him, as I recognized that they had no power whatsoever over the functioning of the app. “We hate the app,” he told me. I thanked him for his candor — I weary of employees who defend their employing organizations when the policies and actions of such organizations are obviously problematic. My kids’ high school district has decided to only sell event tickets through “GoFan” which collects an extra dollar fee for every ticket sold for its own profit, and means that everyone has to use digital means of payment. About 10 days ago as my parents were struggling to get the credit card info into my mom’s phone to pay for tickets to watch my daughter’s wrestling event, one of the coaches confided that he hates the new district policy of using GoFan, “We all hate it,” he said.

    I won’t be using the McD app in the future.

    There *is* beginning to be pushback against the “digital everything” world.

    #126366
    Oroboros
    Participant

    I want to see global psychopathic oligarchs and their sycophants Face Stomped®

    Ukronaziland getting Face Stomped® by Russia is the first step in this progression.

    Total Defeat is a necessary step

    Eurotardistan getting Face Stomped® is the second step n this progression.

    Demonrats and RINO Rethuglicans getting Face Stomped® is the third step in this progression.

    See a pattern here?

    The Empire of Lies® Medical Industrial Mafia and it’s attendant minions should also be Face Stomped®


    .

    #126367
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “My kids’ high school district has decided to only sell event tickets through “GoFan” which collects an extra dollar fee for every ticket sold for its own profit, and means that everyone has to use digital means of payment.”

    #$@%ing BANDZOOGLE will sell your event tickets with ZERO commission. (see https://bandzoogle.com/features/event-ticket-sales)

    Considering I easily found a zero commission option in 10 seconds of searching, there has GOT to be some kickback element to this. Who is getting a chunk of that $1/ticket or some kind of payment in kind?

    #126368
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Yep, ‘Brave New World’ plus ‘1984’, with ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’ thrown in just to make it more ‘interesting’.

    Moral meltdown, financial meltdown, economic meltdown, welfare meltdown, social meltdown, energetic meltdown, environmental meltdown…. all predicted and all accelerating.

    Just awaiting Oceania’s military meltdown to run its course and then it will all be pretty much over.

    #126371
    Oroboros
    Participant

    When ever I don’t have the time, which is mostly, I check in with Doug Macgregor for a quick Ukro summary

    Ukraine is collapsing under the weight of Russian Offensives

    #126374
    jb-hb
    Participant

    San Fran City Panel Urges Reparations Of $5 Million Per Black Adult
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/san-fran-city-panel-urges-reparations-5-million-black-adult

    “recommendation of the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC)”

    Marxists love committees. You add an “advisory committee” by cajoling that it will be merely advisory, have no power. But of course the idea is to get a committee going that was neither elected nor appointed by elected officials (Ibrihim X Kendri’s expressed in writing goal for the method of governance for the future USA) that then, once created, you find DOES have power it can exercise socially, symbolically, and uses it to progressively acquire more and more official power. The main thing is to get these advisory committees going.

    “San Francisco’s budget is around $14 billion and there were about 47,000 African Americans in the 2020 census”

    47,000 x $5,000,000 = $235,000,000,000

    I think they should just do it. Do it to see what happens. PLEASE do it.

    Like, when I hear they’re going to make a new Star Wars movie directed and written by Damon Lindelof (Lost, Prometheus, etc) I say yes, absolutely do it. I want it more than anything ever in my life. Please work to ensure it has the biggest possible budget, multiple reshoots to get it all perfect, etc – to make sure it is a guaranteed success.

    A 2nd season of Amazon Rings of Power but directed and written solely by women now, which will fix all the problems with season 1? THANK you Amazon. Do it. Please. It is suddenly my deepest desire, held since childhood, held since I was inside the womb. Don’t let me down Amazon, DO it.

    #126375
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Blackrock

    It’s Pure Evil Master

    ..

    Larry Fink

    AKA Rat Fink

    From my childhood and Big Daddy Roth

    .

    #126376
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #126377
    Oroboros
    Participant
    #126378
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #126379
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    One of the most difficult things in the world to do is to really, and truly, set aside personal preference and bias and think clearly, without prejudice. It may, indeed, be virtually impossible.

    Be that as it may be however, let’s hypothetically suppose that it WAS possible and that some unlucky bloke had actually done it (maybe by accident.) That poor guy would then face the apparently insurmountable task of communicating his findings to other people who had not yet personally experienced and benefited from that particularly rare miracle. In other words, practically EVERYBODY else (other than a few saints who are totally ostracized and ignored because everybody thinks them to be crazy) will dismiss what he says because they know better than he does.

    Ugo Bardi is my intellectual superior. In a thinking contest he would be putting the groceries away in the kitchen cabinet while I was still trying to fight my way out of the paper bag that they came home from the store in.

    I’m not being modest. I’m not even being falsely modest. I’m simply stating an obvious fact that would be easily and immediately verified by a 30 minute IQ Test. (why waste two hours when a short-form test will conclusively prove the same thing?). He’s smarter than me. And that unfortunate fact present the both of us with a REALLY big problem.

    The smarter guy will decide if the dumber guy is right or not, and rest upon his intellectual superiority (which is demonstrably verifiable) as judge and jury. Case closed.

    But here’s the deal, see, his brain power does not make him right, any more than my lack of it makes me wrong. A fact is just a fact regardless of what either guys thinks about it. Therefore when a dumb guy tries to factually inform a smart guy that the smart guy has reached a very very badly wrong conclusion because of the erroneous assumptions of supposed facts . . . problems arise.

    And therein is the friction rash that nobody is very good at relieving. The cognitive differential is not the problem. It is the very MECHANICS of communication that is the problem.

    Not all facts, you see, are intellectualizable.

    Some facts simply ARE, and there ain’t nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

    The existence of God, for example. Is He or ain’t he?

    He is. Whether you like it or not.

    You may have noticed that there is a Universe all around you. It’s His. He has granted (God only knows why) to you the free will to share the Universe with Him and with each other.

    YOUR only job is to share it well. Kindly leave the rest of it in his more competent care.

    God will decide, and make abundantly clear to all concerned, if and when He decides that there is too much population, or “too many people”. Perhaps He’s doing that right now. Perhaps there are too many people and the numbers are about to be catastrophically reduced by an internecine war between the minority smartypants who believe there are too many humans, and the hoi paloi who believe that it is not within ANY human being’s authority to make that call.

    The fact that almost every intellectual fails to grasp is that the OPERATIVE factual reality of the existence of an infallible, omniscient and omnipotent God which they hold to be at best a sort of vaporous “fringe” theory . . . is INSTEAD the single most fundamentally operative fact underpinning and making manifest the Universe they all exist in and pride themselves at being so superior at “Sciencing”.

    So what is my point of contention with Mr. Bardi ?

    It is his proposal that it is somehow humanity’s responsibility to determine how many people is the right number of people. That conversation is off limits if you’re even REMOTELY going at it with the notion that you should have some say-so in changing the numbers against the will of any human being effected by that “conversation”. Talk is fine. Chatter away. Action committees and secretive high casualty rate “solutions” are NOT okay.

    I maintain that it is NOT humanity’s responsibility to determine how many people is the ideal number of people. My position is that this Universe is God’s creation. The Supreme Being made it and put life in it and is the unchallengable authority of how much of both there should be.

    Our job description is to make the best of the situation (life) that we find ourselves in. The job starts with a small few simple but difficult rules that everyone intuitively understands (so I needn’t repeat them here yet again).

    But I do have one earnest and sincere question to pose my betters. What makes you so sure that your abstract reasoning (your own personal AI modeling machine) is better than actual reality or could arrogate to itself the right to improve upon it?

    #126380
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Rat Fink lives!

    .

    #126381
    Oroboros
    Participant

    sorry for the doubles

    #126382
    Dora
    Participant
    #126383
    irwin
    Participant

    These rates of change are not static. Using the same information, the present rate of change is 3 degrees Fahrenheit/100yrs and more than 3cm/10yrs sea level rise (or 12 ft/100 yrs).

    From the climate.gov webpage —
    Earth’s temperature has risen by 0.14° Fahrenheit (0.08° Celsius) per decade since 1880, but the rate of warming since 1981 is more than twice that: 0.32° F (0.18° C) per decade.
    From the IPCC —
    GMSL rose by 1.5 mm yr-1 during the period 1901–1990, accelerating to 3.6 mm yr-1 during the period 2005–2015.

    #126384
    jb-hb
    Participant

    People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder tend to test higher than average on IQ tests.

    Nevertheless, they are described as being “cognitively challenged”

    Anyone who has had some sort of a relationship with a Narc – parent, significant other, sibling, coworker, boss, etc – will have had the experience of trying to explain elementary concepts to a Narc, of breaking it down further and further, providing simple analogies, copious over-explanations that would normally get an 80 iq person to catch on but the Narc simply cannot get it.

    Meaning is an emergent property of context. Narcs have a real hard time with context and therefore have a really hard time with meaning. They end up being higher-IQ and unable to understand things.

    By definition, by the nature of their existence, the Narc can NEVER exit the trap. They can never put aside the defense mechanisms that block the very faculties that can detect context and therefore derive meaning. Never ever deactivating the defense mechanisms is who and what they are. (Whatever person may have been there is gone, there’s just the defensive system left ala Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers)

    But the same “cognition-challenging” traps are there for all to fall into. His IQ may be higher but his cognition?

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