Jan 242023
 
 January 24, 2023  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Vincent van Gogh The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884

 

Russia and West On Verge Of ‘Real War’ – Lavrov (RT)
War Between West, Russia No Longer Hybrid, But Real, Says Lavrov (TASS)
Why the End of the American Empire Was Delayed (Batiushka)
US Plans Threatened WWIII And Forced Moscow’s Hand – Medvedev (RT)
Germany Rewrites History To Blame Russia For Its Own Bad Decisions (Marsden)
Hungary To Oppose EU’s Anti-Russian Nuclear Sanctions – Foreign Minister (TASS)
Italy’s New Foreign Policy And A Multipolar World Order (Papalia)
Poland Considered Partitioning Ukraine – Former FM (RT)
Wagner Founder Gives Explanation For US Hostility (RT)
Meta/Facebook Takes Azov Regiment Off Its Dangerous Organizations List (EG)
The 2024 Election and the “Get Out of Jail Free” Vote (Turley)
Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Just Another Russia-Collusion Hoax (Fed.)
FDA Panel To Consider Annual Covid-19 Vaccine Shots (Hill)
Collapse Is Not An Event, But A Process (Ugo Bardi)
Temperatures in Northern Hemisphere Due to Fall Over Next 25 Years (DS)
Carbon Credits Are the Biggest Scam Since Indulgences (IM)

 

 

???? “To be published June 6 2023”.

 

 

Zelensky Addressing a Chambers of Commerce meeting in Boca Raton

 

 

 

 

Gonzalo F-16s

 

 

 

 

Wagenknecht
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617331636433035264

 

 

Shellenberger

 

 

 

 

EU Foreign Ministers will discuss the allocation of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine from the “European Peace Fund” – Josep Borrell

 

 

Stating the obvious.

Russia and West On Verge Of ‘Real War’ – Lavrov (RT)

The current situation in Ukraine shows that the conflict between Russia and the West can no longer be defined as a “hybrid war” but is instead approaching being a real one, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. Speaking at a press conference following a meeting with his South African counterpart, Naledi Pandor, Lavrov also noted that this “almost real” war was something that the West “has been preparing for a long time against Russia.” The minister claimed that Western powers are seeking to destroy everything Russian, from the language to the culture that had existed in Ukraine for centuries, and even forbid people from speaking their native language.

Lavrov went on to point out that such practices have become commonplace throughout Ukraine and that the country’s last two presidents, Pyotr Poroshenko and current leader Vladimir Zelensky, have both turned into “presidents of war” and “Russophobic leaders” after gaining power, despite running their presidential campaigns under the promise of establishing peace. The minister also recalled that Ukraine has adopted laws that prohibit using the Russian language in education, media, and even in everyday life. “And this is all supported by the West,” Lavrov said, adding that this support extends to neo-Nazi marches with swastikas and symbols of banned Nazi divisions being held across the country. He also accused the West of turning a blind eye to the fact that Kiev’s forces continue to deliberately choose targets and carry out attacks in such a way as to terrorize the civilian population.

“The West knows perfectly well that the Ukrainian regime deliberately bombs cities and towns using Western-supplied weapons,” the minister said. Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position that it has not carried out attacks in Ukraine against civilian infrastructure, and that the damage to it is attributable to Kiev’s regular practice of deploying heavy weapons and air defense systems in residential areas. Despite the spiraling tensions, Lavrov noted that Moscow remains open to negotiations with Kiev, and warned that those who refuse talks should understand that the longer they are delayed, the harder it will be to find a solution. The minister also asked the Ukrainian government to explain, perhaps through a third party, how it sees the situation in the country playing out and the possibility of negotiations with Russia.

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Same issue, but different words.

War Between West, Russia No Longer Hybrid, But Real, Says Lavrov (TASS)

What is going on in Ukraine is no longer a hybrid war, but a real war between the West and Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. “When we talk about what is going on in Ukraine, we are talking about the fact that this is no longer a hybrid war, but a real one, the West has been preparing for a long time against Russia, trying to destroy everything Russian: from language to culture, which has been in Ukraine for centuries, and forbidding people to speak their native language,” he said at a press conference following talks with South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor.


“In Ukraine, this is all common practice. Both the former president [of Ukraine, Pyotr] Poroshenko and the current one [Vladimir] Zelensky, who were elected under the slogan of establishing peace, immediately after being elected turned into war presidents, Russophobe presidents,” Lavrov said. The Russian top diplomat recalled that Ukraine has adopted laws that prohibit education in Russian, media in Russian, including such media in Ukraine, laws that even, in fact, prohibit the use of the Russian language in everyday life. “Any cultural contacts related to the Russian language are prohibited. And this is all supported by the West. Just like the West supports the regular marches of neo-Nazis with swastikas, with symbols of division which were banned by the Nuremberg Tribunal, recognized as criminal. The West supports all this,” Lavrov said.

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“..it never really grasped how completely underhand and perfidious the West is..”

Why the End of the American Empire Was Delayed (Batiushka)

Why did President Putin and the Russian Federation as a whole allow the White House to take over Kiev and then most of the Donbass in 2014-2015? As a result, Russian forces have been faced since 2022 with the far worse task of liberating, demilitarising and denazifying the Ukraine. Worse still, because Washington has forced Kiev to reject any peace negotiations with Moscow and is sending the Ukraine much of what it has through its NATO proxies, Russian forces are faced with the even worse task of liberating, demilitarising and denazifying the whole of the US-run NATO. President Putin has himself admitted that he made a mistake in not acting in 2015. So why this delay in resistance and bringing about the collapse of the American Reich? There are three clear reasons:

1. In 2014-15 the Russian Federation was far too weak militarily, economically and politically to stand up to the bully of the Western world. A war of liberation initiated then could have ended up very badly for Russia, which had suffered greatly from Western ‘sanctions’ just for its liberation of the Crimea.

2. The Russian Federation government had too little support inside its Westernised self to resist. CIA assets, including treacherous followers of the Vlasovtsy (5), had infiltrated all its institutions, including even the Russian Orthodox Church. This was already clear in 1993 during the October Coup, Black October, in which probably thousands of Russian patriots were massacred by the pro-Western Yeltsin regime. Five years ago, I met a former US marine, who had been sent in 1993 to a base outside Moscow, together with 4,000 other marines, who had been instructed that they might be needed to put down an anti-American revolt in Moscow. (In the end, they were not). 4,000 US troops around Moscow in 1993 at the invitation of its drunken ruler? Yes. A fifth column of Russian Westernisers, pussy rioters, liberals, journalists, actors, musicians, oligarchs, politicians, educationalists? Yes. All Russian institutions infiltrated by traitors? Yes. Only in 2022 was the Russian Federation ready to resist the American bully. It had taken it until 2022 to get ready, and even then the traitors were there in abundance, though soon running away to Israel, Finland, Georgia and elsewhere (6).

3. Western readers should not underestimate the incredible naivety of Russians towards the West. The Russians did not think that the West would forbid Kiev to reject a peace agreement in March/April 2022, thus forcing Kiev and Western economies to commit suicide, like a spoilt child who hurts himself just in order to spite his parents. As a result the limited operation to free the Donbass had to be entirely rethought. Again, President Putin was quite recently shocked to learn that he had been lied to by the German Merkel and the French Hollande. He had been tricked into believing that the West was sincere and that it was actually going to implement the Minsk Accords to protect the Donbass. As those two Western leaders recently admitted, the Minsk accords had only been playing for time to allow the Kiev Army to prepare, dig in, arm, train and then invade. Western leaders are liars. Fact. The origin of this extraordinary Russian naivety seems to be because between 1917 and 1991 Russia was cut off from the West, it lived in a bubble, so that it never really grasped how completely underhand and perfidious the West is. I have been living in Western Europe for too long not to know it. Ten years ago a Muscovite put it to me very well: ‘We knew that the Communists were lieing to us about Communism. What we didn’t know is that they were telling us the truth about Capitalism’.

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..“serious crisis” at the UN and other international institutions, which were created to resolve international disputes but have been turned into a battlefield by the West instead.”

US Plans Threatened WWIII And Forced Moscow’s Hand – Medvedev (RT)

The US and its allies almost ignited a third world war by preparing to attack Russia, which had no choice but to do something about it, former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday, addressing the leadership of the ruling United Russia party in Moscow. “Our party should help the people around the world understand that the ongoing special operation was a forced and last-resort response to preparations for aggression by the US and its satellites,” Medvedev said. “It is obvious that the world came close to the threat of WWIII because of what was happening,” he added. Medvedev also described a “serious crisis” at the UN and other international institutions, which were created to resolve international disputes but have been turned into a battlefield by the West instead.


“Our opponents are trying to enlist as many votes as possible in support of their anti-Russian initiatives, using underhanded means such as economic pressure, extortion and political bribery,” Medvedev said, adding that the main mission of Russian diplomacy remained countering this “cynical line” by the West. Medvedev was president of Russia between 2008 and 2012, when he became the chairman of the ruling party and prime minister. He stepped down as PM in 2020 to run the national security council. Though the West considered him a “liberal” during his presidency, Medvedev has been blunt and outspoken about the special military operation in Ukraine since it was launched in February 2022. Just last week, he ridiculed the World Economic Forum in Davos and warned the West that the current conflict is existential in nature for Russia, which should be kept in mind when it comes to nuclear weapons and their possible use.

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The Greens play a curious role in Germany. They have a lot of power.

Germany Rewrites History To Blame Russia For Its Own Bad Decisions (Marsden)

The German town of Brunsbuttel, near Hamburg, received a new floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on Friday, another step in the country’s search to replace the gas supplies it now can’t get from Russia. Small protests in the vicinity of the port held by locals unhappy with the new facility belied the official fanfare. Meanwhile, wider criticism has been levelled against Berlin’s efforts to boost gas imports by both land and sea, which climate activists believe to be very environmentally unfriendly. German Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck, of the Green Party, said the new terminal was necessary because “half of the gas supply to Germany stopped, because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has cut it off. Now the supply has been stopped completely and it will not come back to us.”

Except that’s not how it all went down. Nearly a year ago, just before the Ukraine conflict turned hot and as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stopped the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany and into Europe, Habeck was already keen to give Russian gas the boot. He told public radio that the country could go without it. The comment promptly raised eyebrows in the Western press, with Bloomberg, for example, calling the proposition “tricky.” Habeck’s Greens, and the German government more generally, have long been obsessed with renewables. The Ukraine conflict was merely an excuse to double down. Even the International Energy Agency took note of this back in March 2022. “Progress towards net zero ambitions in Europe will bring down gas use and imports over time,” according to an IEA report.

In April, Habeck said, “We are working actively to become independent on fossil fuels from Russia,” and cited “great progress.” Not once, but twice, Habeck publicly declared that he had reduced his shower time, in hat had become both a means of saving energy and also of sticking it to Putin, a gesture reminiscent of the folks who pull on escalator handrails thinking that they’re helping move all the people to the top. Habeck said that such measures would “annoy Putin.” Actually, it mostly just annoyed Germans and Europeans. Habeck appeared alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at a meeting of bloc representatives in Versailles on March 8, when she said, “We must become independent from Russian oil, coal and gas.” Habeck echoed the sentiment: “All the German government’s, the country’s, efforts are going toward reducing this dependency as quickly as possible and then using the energy policy room for maneuver we have gained, including in security policy terms.”

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“Hungary will not support any EU sanctions that would potentially limit cooperation with Russia in the nuclear field..”

Hungary To Oppose EU’s Anti-Russian Nuclear Sanctions – Foreign Minister (TASS)

Hungary will not support any EU sanctions that would potentially limit cooperation with Russia in the nuclear field, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters during a break at a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels Monday. “Hungary will not support any sanctions that in any way limit nuclear cooperation with Russia,” Szijjarto said. The Minister noted that “the European Commission has, obviously, commenced the development of the 10th sanctions package.” However, Hungary warned that it will not support any proposals “if they include restrictions on cooperation with Russia in the nuclear area,” Szijjarto said.


“This would cause enormous damage to our country and violate its energy security,” he underscored. “I made it clear that nuclear energy is crucial for Hungary’s power supply,” the Foreign Minister said, noting that the Paks Nuclear Power plant, which uses Russian nuclear fuel, provides half of the country’s energy supply. “Without the Paks NPP, the current power supply in Hungary would be impossible. Just as it would be impossible to ensure Hungary’s power security in the upcoming decades without construction of new reactor units at the Paks NPP,” Szijjarto said.

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‘Italy’s posture must return to the defence of its national interests … It doesn’t mean having a negative stance toward others, it means having a positive one for ourselves … because everyone else is doing it’

Italy’s New Foreign Policy And A Multipolar World Order (Papalia)

In recent developments Meloni’s foreign policy has been pointing away from the EU and NATO. She and her political allies have publicly supported Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbàn, who has attacked the sanctions against Russia, following the EU’s condemnation of his authoritarian policies; Hungary is a NATO member but has signed a separate deal with Gazprom to secure supplies of Russian gas. Meloni’s party is also allied to the governing nationalist Right in Poland, the Czech Republic’s governing Civic Democratic Party, and the far right Sweden Democrats Party that triumphed in elections in September 2022. The German far right Alternative für Deutschland Party was ‘jubilant’ over Meloni’s success; it too has opposed sanctions against Russia and its vote is also on the rise.

As in the 1930s, one should not discount ideological and political affinities across national borders, particularly when national interests also align. As Bhadrakumar warns: ‘Do not underestimate the “Meloni effect”. The heart of the matter is that far-right forces invariably have more to offer to the electorate in times of insecurity and economic hardship.’ In the current era, these affinities can be gathered under the broad ideological umbrella of ‘sovereigntism’, putting EU unity at risk. Should Italy distance itself from NATO or leave it altogether, particularly in the light of Turkey’s ambivalent stance and the possibility of a Russian victory in Ukraine, it is doubtful that the alliance would be able to survive. This is not as far-fetched a thought as it might seem.

According to retired Italian General Fabio Mini, former commander of the NATO-led KFOR mission in Kosovo (2002–03), NATO’s expansion to Eastern Europe over recent decades, promoted by the United States, has further undermined the alliance’s cohesion and unity of purpose. The Ukraine–Russia crisis, as pointed out by Thomas Hughes, a scholar of international and defence policy, ‘marks an existential crisis for NATO’. Under these circumstances the United States would find it increasingly difficult to maintain a military presence in Italy. On 1 October 2022, following news that Germany’s Social Democrat-led government had rejected Italy’s proposed Europe-wide price cap on gas and that Italy would no longer receive gas from Russia through Austria, Meloni addressed a crowd of angry farmers in Milan: ‘Italy’s posture must return to the defence of its national interests … It doesn’t mean having a negative stance toward others, it means having a positive one for ourselves … because everyone else is doing it’.

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Poles falling over each other to be the most belligerent.

Poland Considered Partitioning Ukraine – Former FM (RT)

Former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has suggested that the government in Warsaw considered partitioning Ukraine in the first weeks of the military conflict between Kiev and Moscow. His comments came in an interview with Radio ZET on Monday, prompting a strong retort from the country’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki. Sikorski was asked if the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) government had ever entertained the idea of dividing up Ukraine. He replied by stating that there was “a moment of hesitation in the first 10 days of the war, when we all didn’t know how it would go, that maybe Ukraine would fall.” “Had it not been for the heroism of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and the help of the West, things could have been different,” Sikorski said.

His remarks soon drew a reaction from Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who accused Sikorski of behaving “like a Russian propagandist.” “The former foreign minister must weigh his words. I expect these disgraceful statements to be withdrawn. I call on the opposition to dissociate themselves from Radoslaw Sikorski’s declaration,” Morawiecki tweeted. It is not the first time Sikorski has been at odds with the government in Warsaw. In September, the ex-minister tweeted “Thank you, USA” alongside a photo of a massive gas leak caused by the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

Sikorski further congratulated those responsible for the act, saying the severe damage caused to the natural gas pipelines would force Russia to talk to Poland and Ukraine if it wanted to continue delivering gas to Europe. “Good work,” he concluded in a second tweet. He later deleted both tweets. Russia responded to the former FM’s post by calling it an “official statement” confirming the Nord Stream incident was a “terrorist attack.” It still remains unclear who exactly was behind the sabotage as both Ukraine and Washington and its allies have denied responsibility.

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“..Of course, if you’re doing a reversal of concepts, you can make anyone look bad.”

Wagner Founder Gives Explanation For US Hostility (RT)

The Wagner Group scares the US because it is willing to oppose American atrocities around the world, the private military company’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed on Monday, answering a question from RT. Washington said last week that it would designate the Russian PMC as an international criminal organization, accusing it of “widespread atrocities and human rights abuses.” “Unlike American paramilitary structures,” Prigozhin said in a written response to RT, “Wagner PMC only goes after the enemies of peace, and does not commit crimes. Of course, if you’re doing a reversal of concepts, you can make anyone look bad.”

The US is the only country to use nuclear weapons in history, and “organized wars and revolutions” in “Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Mozambique, Central Africa and so on,” Prigozhin noted, adding that in some of those countries Wagner came in and “stopped the wars with an iron fist.” Calling the US “a powerful criminal syndicate subsisting on the money of the entire world,” Prigozhin said Wagner was “more like the vice police” in relation. Washington “trained bandits and terrorists all over the world so that there would be unrest everywhere,” while the “fantasy island called the USA” lives in peace, he added. Used to people not fighting back or getting intimidated by name-calling, the Americans don’t know what to do with Wagner, who “looks into the eyes of the personification of world evil without fear.”

Prigozhin said the US objective is to break up Russia just as it did to the USSR, then take on China, in order to maintain its global hegemony. The Wagner Group was originally established in 2014. Over the past year, its fighters have taken part in battles against the Ukrainian military in the Donbass. Earlier this month, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged Wagner’s role in capturing the key town of Soledar. US authorities have accused the PMC of unspecified “human rights violations” in Syria and the Central African Republic, where Wagner helped the government against jihadist insurgents. Last month, the State Department declared Wagner an “entity of particular concern” for religious freedom in Africa, in the same category as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

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Why?

Meta/Facebook Takes Azov Regiment Off Its Dangerous Organizations List (EG)

Facebook parent company Meta has removed the Azov Regiment, a controversial unit within the Ukrainian National Guard with alleged far-right political leanings, from its list of dangerous individuals and organizations. The move, first reported by The Kyiv Independent, means members of the unit can now create Facebook and Instagram accounts and post without Meta automatically flagging and removing their content. Additionally, unaffiliated users can praise the Azov Regiment, provided they abide by the company’s Community Standards. “The war in Ukraine has meant changing circumstances in many areas and it has become clear that the Azov Regiment does not meet our strict criteria for designation as a dangerous organization,” a company spokesperson told The Kyiv Independent.

Sharing more information on the policy change, Meta told The Washington Post it recently began to view the Azov Regiment as a separate entity from other groups associated with the far-right nationalist Azov Movement. Specifically, the company pointed to Ukraine’s National Corp political party and founder Andriy Biletsky, noting they’re still on its list of dangerous individuals and organizations. “Hate speech, hate symbols, calls for violence and any other content which violates our Community Standards are still banned, and we will remove this content if we find it,” Meta said. The Azov Regiment was founded in 2014 by Biletsky following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas War that same year. Before the unit was integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard in November 2014, it was controversial for its adherence to neo-Nazi ideology.

In 2015, a spokesperson for the Azov Regiment said 10 to 20 percent of the unit’s recruits were self-professed Nazis. At the start of the 2022 conflict, Ukrainian officials said the Azov Regiment still had some extremists among its ranks but claimed the unit had largely become depoliticized. During the months-long siege of Mariupol, the Azov Regiment played a prominent role in the city’s defense. Russia captured many of the battalion’s fighters at the end of the battle. The change underscores just how much Meta’s content moderation policies have changed since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Partway through last year, the company began temporarily allowing people in Ukraine and a handful of other countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers. After the decision created controversy, Meta said it would turn to the Oversight Board for policy guidance, a request the company later withdrew, citing “ongoing safety and security concerns” related to the war.

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“..Both of these investigations could easily take a year or more.”

The 2024 Election and the “Get Out of Jail Free” Vote (Turley)

President Biden has declared that the criminal investigation into his possession of classified material ultimately will fizzle out because “there is no ‘there’ there.” To the contrary, there obviously is a great deal “there,” enough that a special counsel was appointed to investigate a classified documents trail from a D.C. office closet to Biden’s Delaware garage. Although the president wants Americans to look down the road past images of classified documents next to his vintage Corvette, we may be heading into one of the most bizarre, unsettling moments in our constitutional history. There is now a distinct possibility we will have not just two leading candidates campaigning for the presidency with their own respective special counsels in tow, but two candidates who could be indicted or close to indictment at the time of the election. That would present some novel political and constitutional questions.

A great deal already has been written about comparisons of the two cases and the obvious differences. The Justice Department’s Trump investigation includes not only accusations of mishandling classified material but also of false statements and obstruction; far more documents are involved, too. Yet enough similarities exist that Justice could weigh charges in both cases, even if only misdemeanors. Moreover, the Biden allegations are serious in their own way. The documents in Donald Trump’s possession at Mar-a-Lago were largely housed in a locked storage room with security added at the FBI’s request; there was ’round-the-clock Secret Service protection and camera surveillance. That is not ideal — but it is better than a dozen documents scattered around a closet, garage and library in different states.

There is no question of gross mishandling in Biden’s case. There is only the question of who was responsible. If the evidence shows that Joe Biden used any of these clearly marked documents to write his book or other projects, his insistence on “inadvertent” possession will take on a more sinister meaning as an effort to deceive the public and the FBI. Both of these investigations could easily take a year or more. The average time of a special counsel investigation of a president is over 900 days. These two investigations should take less than the average — but they are starting in 2023, with a presidential election in 2024. Trump has already announced, and Biden is expected to do so soon.

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Equal justice?

Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Just Another Russia-Collusion Hoax (Fed.)

The search of Biden’s home followed the discovery in November 2022 of at least 10 classified documents, including ones reportedly marked “top secret.” Those documents also dated back to his days as vice president under Barack Obama and were stored in a closet at a private office building in D.C. But the so-called “think tank” where they were stored, the Penn Biden Center, did not open until February 2018, meaning Biden had kept the classified documents found there at another location for the year following his time as vice president. That the classified documents Biden removed from the White House and earlier the Senate were not missed at the time and are only now being discovered — at least a decade later for some — and then only after multiple searches of different locations, contrasts sharply with what happened following Trump’s time in office.

According to then-archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, he watched “the Trumps leave the White House and getting off in the helicopter” at the end of Trump’s term. Ferriero recalled someone was “carrying a white banker box,” prompting Ferriero to ask himself, “What the hell’s in that box?” Ferriero claimed, “[T]hat began a whole process of trying to determine whether any records had not been turned over to the Archives,” with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) “going through materials transferred from the White House in the chaotic final days of Trump’s presidency.” According to The Washington Post, “officials had noticed that certain high-profile documents were missing,” such as “Trump’s correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he had termed ‘love letters.’”

The NARA also could not locate the “National Weather Service map of Hurricane Dorian, which Trump had famously marked up with a black Sharpie pen to extend to Alabama,” or the letter Obama had left for Trump upon the change in administrations. NARA sought the return of these documents, and in January 2022, Trump representatives worked with NARA employees to arrange for 15 boxes of presidential papers to be returned to the archive. Within those boxes were some documents marked “classified,” which led NARA to refer the matter to the Department of Justice. The DOJ then launched an investigation into Trump, even though when alerted to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents, NARA made no such referral.

A grand jury later issued a subpoena for any presidential documents, and following a search of Mar-a-Lago by Trump’s representatives, those documents were turned over. However, after a source told the DOJ that some documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI obtained a search warrant and executed a surprise raid on the former president’s home. This entire sequence began because NARA went looking for missing documents and then, rather than work with Trump to establish his presidential library and to arrange for the documents to be stored under the auspices of NARA’s custody at a mutually agreeable location — something NARA had done for Obama — NARA created a federal criminal case out of the matter.

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Maybe 1% will take them.

FDA Panel To Consider Annual Covid-19 Vaccine Shots (Hill)

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) advisory panel on vaccines is set to consider an annual schedule for the coronavirus vaccine, akin to how flu vaccines are administered, when it meets this week. The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) will meet Thursday to discuss how to simplify and streamline the COVID-19 vaccination process, including the composition of coronavirus vaccines and the recommended scheduling for these shots. The rapid evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, resulting in variants with an improved ability to escape immune protection, means that “periodically updating the composition of COVID-19 vaccines as needed,” as was done with the updated bivalent booster, requires consideration, according to panel documents posted Monday.


The panel said it anticipates evaluating the composition of the COVID-19 vaccine annually in June and making a recommendation for the following year — though it acknowledged the difficulties of mounting a globally coordinated vaccine recommendation. “FDA anticipates conducting an assessment of SARS-CoV-2 strains at least annually and to engage VRBPAC in about early June of each year regarding strain selection for the fall season,” the VRBPAC documents said. While acknowledging that COVID-19 and the flu are not identical, VRBPAC said the deployment of the bivalent COVID-19 boosters, created to target both the ancestral strain of the virus as well as the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants, was “analogous” to annual flu vaccinations.

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“There is nothing definitive in the universe, and collapses exist because the old must leave space for the new. ”

Collapse Is Not An Event, But A Process (Ugo Bardi)

About ten years ago, my friend and colleague Massimo Nicolazzi wrote that the inversion of the declining trend of oil production in the US could not be neglected any longer. I commented by saying that it was a short-lived flare that couldn’t last for long. It turned out that Nicolazzi was right and I was wrong. By now, the growth of the US oil production curve has been lasting for more than ten years and is still ongoing — it was not just a short-lived flare. Of course, it cannot last forever but, for the time being, it changed everything. Among others, it propeled the American Empire back to the path of world domination that the Neocons theorized in the 1990s.

Does that mean that Hubbert’s “peak oil” theory is wrong and must be discarded? Of course not. It only means reinforcing some of the basic rules of complex systems. For instance, the one that goes “complex systems always surprise you,” and also, “never take an example as a rule.” So, when dealing with collapse (that I call the “Seneca Cliff) we should always remember that collapse is not an event, it is a process. Collapses have a history, they are the result of the interaction of several factors, and the same processes that generate collapse can also generate its opposite, which I tend to call the “Seneca Rebound.” It is normal. There is nothing definitive in the universe, and collapses exist because the old must leave space for the new.

Recently, for another unexpected change, I identified a new trend: the rapid growth of renewable energy production worldwide. A trend that can be well described by some recent studies in terms of the EROI (energy returned for energy invested) of renewables having become several times larger than that of fossil fuels. No wonder we are seeing — or we’ll soon see — a revolving door effect in energy production. Fossils are out, renewables are in. History rhymes, as it usually does! Then, just like Nicolazzi’s statement about tight oil was not believed by peak-oil hardliners (including me), my statements on renewables were understood as a mortal offense by catastrophistic hardliners. You can’t believe how nasty their comments have been: apart from branding me an incompetent, an idiot, and ignorant of the basic laws of physics, catastrophism seems to be strictly linked to conspirationism, so people have been writing that I cannot tell the truth because I am blackmailed by the powers that be (no, really, someone wrote exactly that!).

The problem is the science of complex systems is never black or white. It doesn’t allow for absolute truths, nor it is sympathetic to people choosing between complacency and panic (the two functioning modes of human beings according to James Schlesinger). The science of complex systems is, well, a little complex and it needs a little mental flexibility to be understood. Not that it takes superhuman mental capabilities, not at all. It is just that you need to free yourself from the schematic way of reasoning that’s normally imposed on all of us by the media.

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“..the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, an important sea current that has been pumping warmer water into the Arctic, is weakening and that’s leading to a cooler North Atlantic area and lower temperatures, as was observed in the period 1950-1970.”

Temperatures in Northern Hemisphere Due to Fall Over Next 25 Years (DS)

Whisper it quietly – and don’t tell Al ‘Boiling Oceans’ Gore – but the Northern hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C. By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled. These sensational findings, ignored by the mainstream media, were released last year and are the work of six top international scientists led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. Published in the Nature journal Climate and Atmospheric Science, the scientists say that the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, an important sea current that has been pumping warmer water into the Arctic, is weakening and that’s leading to a cooler North Atlantic area and lower temperatures, as was observed in the period 1950-1970.

Certainly, current observations back up these suggestions. As we reported recently, Arctic summer sea ice stopped declining about a decade ago and has shown recent growth. The Greenland surface ice sheet grew by almost 500 billion tonnes in the year to August 2022, and this was nearly equivalent to its estimated annual loss. Of course, climate alarmists have not quite caught up with these recent trends, with Sir David Attenborough telling his BBC Frozen Planet II audience that the summer sea ice could all be gone within 12 years.

Interestingly, the six scientists, whose work has helped debunk the ‘settled’ science myth, still attribute some global warming to human causes. The Northern hemisphere is characterised by “several multidecadal climate trends that have been attributed to anthropogenic climate change”. But producing work that predicts 30 years of global cooling puts them outside the ‘settled’ narrative that claims human-produced carbon dioxide is the main – possibly the only – determinant of global and local temperatures. At the very least, it dials down the hysteria pushing for almost immediate punitive net-Zero measures. Lead author Omrani is reported to have said that the expected warming pause “gives us time to work out technical, political and economic solutions before the next warming phase, which will take over again from 2050”.

Read more …

“..there’s a growing push to implement the carbon credit scam worldwide. And that’s not a coincidence.”

Carbon Credits Are the Biggest Scam Since Indulgences (IM)

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church convinced the commoners to buy indulgences to alleviate their sins. And they made a fortune in the process. Similarly, today, our overlords—the mainstream media, central bankers, and their political allies—are working overtime to convince the commoners to pay for their alleged climate sins. Enter carbon credits, government-issued permits that grant you the privilege to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. Although advocates promote them as a way to “save the environment,” in reality, carbon credits are nothing more than a devious mechanism to tax, regulate, and control you. It’s not a coincidence that the most philosophically and ethically bent people are promoting them.


For example, at a recent World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, participants revealed and touted an “individual carbon footprint tracker.” It will track where people travel, how they travel, what they eat, and what they consume. Carbon accounting is already creeping into many places, like Google Flights. A federal carbon tax is already a reality in Trudeau’s Canada, and it’s causing the price of food and other goods and services to soar. But Canadians haven’t seen anything yet—the federal carbon tax will triple by 2030. In short, there’s a growing push to implement the carbon credit scam worldwide. And that’s not a coincidence. Remember, central banks only exist to harvest wealth from the populace through inflation and redirect it to the politically connected, an insidious practice known as seigniorage.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Pfizer India
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617493297735270400

 

 


‘Girls in the Windows’ – New York (1960) – Ormond Gigli
The building was knocked down the next day

 

 

Kafka

 

 


This iconic picture by Masa Ushioda is now famous as the ‘whale’s high five’ and was taken off the coast of Hona, Hawaii in 2018

 

 

Limit

 

 


Lifeguards working in Croatia.

 

 

Pelican landing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1617631392644628480

 

 


Alligator lurking in the duckweed. Photo: Cole Frechou

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle January 24 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 79 total)
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  • #126992

    Vincent van Gogh The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884   • Russia and West On Verge Of ‘Real War’ – Lavrov (RT) • War Between West, Russi
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 24 2023]

    #126993
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Wow!

    #126994
    Formerly T-Bear
    Participant

    @ D Benton Smith 23 Jan. 3:30 #126899

    Sir, no apology was needed but is acknowledged. Visual impairment has slowed my reading where I usually do not read past the first 40 comments; yours was brought to my attention so my reply is belated. It was obvious your original response exposed not having given the content of the link consideration. My reaction was to point that out in a form that exemplified what the absence of diplomacy produces; all to great unintended effect that coloured your retort and my opinion thereof. My life experience held your reply was that of one having lost emotional balance momentarily.
    No damage done – no foul. Your #126899 testifies that your maturity allows self correction and speaks highly of your character. It would be a waste to forget the encounter but let us speak no more of it.

    Curiosity and feedback needed on any suggestions to improve and sharpen my writing skills to avoid word salads. (smiley thing)

    #126995
    oxymoron
    Participant

    AFKTT – good Redacted piece. Thanks.

    I feel that watching them talk reminded me that the tale of 2 narratives is alive and well. Most couldn’t/wouldn’t watch that video you posted because like the ‘vaccine’ they want to be told what to think or do by authorities. To the rest of us alot of these sorts of videos just seem like people making sense and asking reasonable questions. Like “what the fuck is Boris Johnson” doing there?” Last I remembered he was not UK pm. Maybe a JP Morgan lackey?

    #126996
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “World on Brink of WW3 Due to West Escalating, Medvedev Warns”

    Talks and preparations shift uniformly to air attacks on Russia. Maybe since everyone still loves and supports Biden, we need WWIII to start under him before his removal and the US$ collapse because of it.

    No US$ = no bribery, than we can have de facto or de jure Bronson case that removes 2/3rds of Congress.

    “Media need to re-establish credibility, and they will need to move their messaging closer to the truth”

    They’re working on this. They started advertising “Stroke season.” Yup. Who knew? Like 9 year olds dying from fluffing sheets, this has always happened and only you didn’t notice. Stroke and heart attack season. It lasts from April Fool’s until March 29th.

    “Daily Mail: What are you waiting for?”

    “The Society of Editors selected it as the ‘Daily Newspaper of the Year’ for 2020. The Daily Mail has also been criticised for its unreliability, its printing of sensationalist and inaccurate scare stories of science and medical research and for instances of plagiarism and copyright infringement. In February 2017, editors on the English Wikipedia banned the use of the Daily Mail as a source.” Wikipedia.

    Its top readership is women, and it’s claimed to be “Conservative”. It is highlighted (lambasted, singled out) on Wiki’s scare course on “Conservatism in the United Kingdom,” marked “Euroskeptic” meaning “Isolationist” and yet is pro-Boris, Pro-Europe, and Pro-War. Huh. Tell me if you hear any alarms yet.

    Like “Obama” replacing Biden (Obama never ran anything and is himself a CIA collective), the Lira F-16s is not going to go off anything like he’s proposing. They should, it’s good logic, I’m not sure why. Maybe like the false flags/chemical/nuclear frauds that magically stopped after they got truckloads of the biolab proof, they will merely shut down the idea of baiting/sacrificing honest F16 pilots beforehand? 2/3rds of what’s really happening is now hidden because the real goernment(s) are hidden? The CIA and White Hats?

    “Gen. Secretary Jen Stoltenberg in #Germany: “Military support to #Ukraine is the fastest way to peace.”

    Apparently I have to say it, as an insult and criticism of them? War = Peace, Freedom = Slavery, Ignorance = Strength. They’ve fully installed all three, yet we’re still fighting.

    The World Economic Forum is a ‘creepy event’: Michael Shellenberger”

    How we see ourselves:
    Villain
    https://sinfest.xyz/btphp/comics/2023-01-24.jpg

    “Rich Elites Create a Global Village”

    As every word is a lie, every statue torn down, every book re-written, what do they mean by “Village”? A village invokes a small, humble, modest place of ordinary people. They create a village of Monaco or Ibiza with 5,000 crack Swiss troops including roof snipers, paved with so many jets you need to hit the panic button to find yours. They are not, by definition, a village. It they descended on a real village, the village would cease to exist and become a “tourist attraction” or “Resort”. P.S. they’re also incapable of “Creating” anything as a function of their wealth which is “Extraction.”

    As language has no meaning, the DNC Whip’s child was arrested in Boston for graffiti yesterday. No problem, minor protest, minor crime. …Oh and assaulting an officer with a weapon, –pfffft! Forgot to mention that and so did all the media. The point? Oh half are reporting it’s her daughter, and half reporting it’s her son. That is to say, neither, or both, are reporting correctly, by deconstructing language, they have deconstructed reality and we can no longer communicate information among ourselves.

    …But hey: this can stop any time. All we need to do is come back to God, morality, and tell the truth for a change. Their child is a person. That person was born with a gender. It’s not difficult to identify that gender. Use it.

    I didn’t bother ‘cause I don’t care what political terrorists do, but my guess is he just prefers the womans’ prison. More potential to rape somebody there, as is happening constantly since they started with the gender-lies in government.

    “EU Foreign Ministers will discuss the allocation of a new tranche of military aid to Ukraine from the “European Peace Fund” – Josep Borrell

    Is that any different from the U.S. Department of Defense? Don’t start telling lies, it’s slippery slope we all descend down together, dragging me with them, punching me for telling them it’s a bad idea. How could telling universal lies every go wrong?

    “Russia and West on Verge of ‘Real War’ – Lavrov (RT)”

    They are very serous about it, and as usual, way ahead of the West, who has instead SHUT OFF their food, their farms, their fertilizer, and their manufacturing in preparation for this war. #Winning! …If you’re in #OppositeLand. I suppose it takes a Tsunami-bomb in NY harbor to deliver an iota of reality to these people then so be it. I don’t know what else to do. I told them. The people told them. But there is no action, so this happens.

    Speaking of, let’s float this idea: We know we have several layers of what’s going on, very complicated, Europe, America, Russia, China. EU/Davos, Pentagon/CIA, CCP/Biden. But let’s propose something else. We know China wants, needs, has written they need to revert the U.S. into a tribal state, a bunch of Manhattan Indians who will sell it to them for some beads. (Actually those Manhattan Indians didn’t live on or own Manhattan: they were immigrants, just visiting for the day and sold the OTHER tribe’s island. How similar…) This is the only way China can get the food they need, they think. Okay, and we see them buy off Pelosi and use Fang-Fang to control the U.S. in the modest, unspoken way China does things.

    We see Davos, WEF, NY Times gush with love and envy to install the Chinese/North Korean model here and there. It is identical to all their goals. Fine, got that. China’s going around the world, sucking things up, absorbing Africa, America, and Europe (by class).

    But China is NOT going to Russia, the most empty, the most resource-rich, the closest??? No? They never for a minute have their eyes on them? No? Too honest for all that, I guess. Too much historic love between them.

    How about this: CHINA is the one united with the WEF, who are united with the Davos DNC and the Neocon puppets to attack Russia. Why? As the 1950’s there are three forces: China, Russia, and the United States (West), and each wants the other two to fight, leaving them remaining on the field. China has indeed arranged, paid, installed, placed, such that Russia and the United States fight and weaken each other, leaving no time to address the CCP. China has indeed savaged Europe thereby, using the NeoCons to ruin her industry for decades, shut off her food, killed her people, leaving more for China. Weakened for decades, perhaps even infertile. China has arranged to depopulate Africa, leaving them open for colonization, as all people are openly paid to flee to France and Sweden. China has run a new opium war of fentanyl on the United States, using a new religion to divisions that weaken and collapse her for complete extraction, just as was done in 1901 with missionaries and HSBC.

    And China weakens RUSSIA thereby, forcing her to use valuable resources and near-complete attention, with all forces in the East. Costing China nothing but some intel agents and some lies. Who makes the decisions that got us here? FangFang, on her knees. Pelosi and McConnell’s Chinese stock fortunes. Hunter’s billion directly “From the f’g Chinese spy agency” as he said.

    What did Cheeto say? “The enemy is not Russia. The real danger is CHINA.” His base is Military Intel inside the Pentagon, the anti-CIA. He said this and they laughed, just like the NordStream and 1% GDP for NATO comments in Germany. I’d say who’s laughing now, but they are. Still. Reality can never intercede.

    Where is all the world’s attention right now? WWIII in Ukraine. China can do whatever they please. I imagine Russia knows, and as I mentioned this is a minor prophesy. Europe approves, they’re aching to merge with China in the NWO as they openly said (again) this Davos. Absolutely the U.S. knows but like everything else, who would you tell? All the people are already paid by China, and the others can’t enforce serious action over it.

    Just consider it.

    “Germany Rewrites History to Blame Russia for Its Own Bad Decisions (Marsden)”

    Every statue torn down, every book re-written, every word erased or re-defined…

    Just tell the truth. It’s not that bad, it doesn’t hurt at all, I promise. Maybe your children would survive and not be murdered for a change. Try it for a day.

    Hungary will not support any EU sanctions that would potentially limit cooperation with Russia in the nuclear field..”

    Redacted pointed out that Russia hasn’t even bothered to bug the West yet. Example? Russia still owns all commercial Uranium and processing and can shut off the remaining Western nuclear reactors. “Uranium One”, “What difference does it make at this point?” Russia hasn’t even started in on us yet, Ukraine to them remains a joke, a minor matter.

    “‘Italy’s posture must return to the defence of its national interests”

    Expect assassination soon as any attempt to help your own people is an open rebellion against the extraction of Davos Mafia. The fact that Africa, Saudi, everyone else has and no coups have occurred means the “Dreadful Elites” are out of power and you can cautiously take over the field. Why hurry? The U.S./West is dead. Let them finish blacking out.

    “Meta/Facebook Takes Azov Regiment Off Its Dangerous Organizations List (EG)”

    All statues torn down, all words redefined…

    “two leading candidates campaigning for the presidency with their own respective special counsels in tow, but two candidates who could be indicted or close to indictment”

    If everything is discredited, the country falls…in China. China WOULD collapse if this were done to THEM, an authoritarian system and culture. They can arrange this, but the U.S. is happy to de-volve, relocalize and organize around States and families, and we already are. Yes, devolution is dangerous, it’s not free lunch to un-centralize the Government. However, if done correctly this break of Trust everywhere merely returns us to the American Plan and our foundation. Good. Don’t trust the government, make them as small as possible and voluntary. What good was it to save the village by destroying it? “They hate us for our freedoms.”

    “Mar-A-Lago Raid Was Just Another Russia-Collusion Hoax (Fed.)”

    Okay, so WHO is going in, finding the docs, and WHY did the media suddenly start admitting things? Who arrested the Russia Hoax agent for selling out the Russians yesterday?

    “Among others, it propelled the American Empire back to the path of world domination that the Neocons theorized in the 1990s.”

    Yes, that’s why Bush kicked off the World War with Iraq, and needed Iran: an actual oil producer. Probably hand it to the Saudis or something as every 911 pal was a Saudi. That’s why we were against intentionally starting a universal world war of aggression and are still in favor of war crimes tribunals and hangings. Most of them are still alive. We have their addresses. What’s the holdup?

    “the EROI (energy returned for energy invested) of renewables having become several times larger than that of fossil fuels.”

    Well that’s just silly, renewables are barely 1:1 EROI. All of them. What he means I think is that they already converted a ton of oil into renewables, and are now extracting that wasted BTUs back out of them. Like Lithium smelting. Or for example, Alkaline batteries or even “earth batteries” you see sometimes: how do you THINK the power got into a Duracell? At the factory. Same with Tesla batteries, or solar panels, actually. You MELTED SAND INTO GLASS for God’s sake, how much energy was that? Have we EVER smelted glass using solar panels? I think not. Demonstrates the problem.

    “Temperatures in Northern Hemisphere Due to Fall over Next 25 Years (DS)”

    Maybe. Remains to be seen. What I can say is the NATIONS are all positioning for a Little Ice Age and not a Global Warming. But Science! – There have never been fewer climate deaths than today. That’s why we/they ignore it and “Make s–t up!”

    “Carbon Credits Are the Biggest Scam Since Indulgences (IM)”

    Again, the reason for Carbon Credits is not to be a scam, but because the currency is collapsing. They need to go up an iteration into a Global “BTU Currency” of the Technocrats. So the only way to replace the Global Reserve Currency is this, the IMF won’t work. That’s why they’re desperate, out of time, and won’t stop. If they stop, they die. Honesty returns, with all that disruption.

    Then no more blackmail, payoffs, and extortion. They all are wiped out by their own people, for their own bad blood, lacking paid protection.

    “‘Girls in the Windows’ – New York (1960) – Ormond Gigli The building was knocked down the next day”

    I’ll bet it’s a s—thole strip mall or cinderblock building now, not a beautiful human-sized building like that.

    “Destroy all the things!!!”

    #126997
    Red
    Participant

    #126998
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Until 2021 I had never heard of Myocarditis”

    Must only be you. Didn’t half the kids in your school get myocarditis or die of it? Didn’t the other half get strokes playing dodge ball? With the weekly defibrillator training between Atomic drills? And we hardly ever ate an egg in the cafeteria without some kid dying of a heart attack.

    Science has halted — for 50+ years!!! — because they’ve swallowed some ridiculous theory that’s totally, stupidly false. Remains to be seen which, but quantum, string theory, GUT, Big Bang, all complete bust. No progress in lifetimes, too arrogant to notice. Pretty sure we’re going to find it’s an “Electric Universe” theory, and where we got off the train was Einstein “disproving” the ether theory of his betters. There may not be an “ether” per se, but it’s functionally the same in electric universe, electric solar system, “electric” gravity. It’s very simple, which is a good recommendation of the theory to be tested.

    That would lead us into a Space Age, stop all the oppression we have down here on an oil economy, so it has to be stopped until we’re all dead and the “Right People” have total control. That was what the fight with Morgan v Tesla was all about.

    Noting the new ad runs seem to eventually overwhelm my Firefox browser and bring it to a near-halt. Don’t act on my behalf: I’ll figure out a way around given enough time. They’re just too “flash” intensive and this is quite common for that type of ad source.

    #127000
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @Gonzalo F-16s Um, I lived in Stuttgart during the Iraq war, the US pilots in the local airbase would come into my regular pub. They would tell us how they had flown over Iraq today and killed X number of niggers. Then they fly back to Stuttgart and go down the pub. I am sure I have told this story here before. I would talk to them, ask them how they feel about this war, thay all – without exception – were pro war and pro American exceptionalism. When I asked them how they felt about killing children, their attitude didn’t change, they were pro-USA and any nigger that gets in their way is another point on the nationalism tally. Yes, these people were retards, they loved to boast about where they had been, any Russian spy in the pub – only senior ranks were allowed to drink in this pub – would have no problem knowning what was happening, after all, even if it is not your conversation, US citizens with a story to tell, and there were plenty in these Stuttgart pubs, would get louder, the more abusive their treatment of the enemy,

    Yes, that is my first hand experience of Americans abroad, they are cunts and they enjoy the pleasure of jumping onto their fighter in the morning, killing a bunch of Iraqis during the lunchtime period, then flying home to the pub in the evening. There are no other people who have earned so much of my contempt.

    Americans are cunts, the religious people will kill anybody to defend America, the left wing woke people will discretely change your child’s sex. Americans are cunts.

    #127001
    The Markster
    Participant

    That draft headline from The Conversation up top is ominous. Similar thoughts have gone through my mind lately, foreshadowed by recent conversations with the pro-jab godparents and two good friends who openly mocked & shunned me in 2021 for my “socially irresponsible” and “naive” position. I did speak out forcefully at work, with several close friends, and in many letters to media and politicians, but it made no difference in their choices at the time.

    Seeing how easy it was for the powers that be to stir up massive violence and hatred over a populist outsider president with the “punch a Nazi” and BLM-Antifa-J6 inversions, it chills me to the bone thinking of what they will do when angry Team Hillary types can no longer deny the snowballing deaths and injuries from the jabs. Does anybody honestly think there will be a fair and honest accounting of what happened, as opposed to more engineered inversion, violence and lies?

    #127002
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Although Americans are cunts, I had an interesting conversation today:

    A Taiwanese national who lives in America came to dinner today, it is Chinese New Year and she is a friend of my wife’s brother. She turns up for dinner, I engage her in a chat about where she lives (Orange country, California), I ask her why she moved there. She moved there because she was looking for a house but she was “amazed to find” that her father’s best friend lived in the next block. Okay, there is more to this story, but I will stay silent. She then tells me that her father’s best friend would invite her to parties and then, after everybody had gone, would let her take all the food home. I don’t know what it is, maybe the race to be infront, but I immediately said “As if you were the homeless”.

    Big mistake. What I did not realise is that the Chinese in Orange County do not mix with white people, it is an exclusively Chinese location and they know nothing of western humour, they do not understand what woke is etc.

    Anyway, this woman has home schooled her kid, we ask her why she did that, she says that she wants to be sure her kid gets into university. We are a bit suspect about that explanation, it is a lot of work hoem schooling a kid when you could put them in public school. We ask her whether she didn’t put her kid into public school because of woke. She turns around and tells us she does not know what woke is. Okay.

    The mother’s child is at the meal, so we ask him what he enjoys doing, he replies “fencing”. Oh, okay, that is a very upper class British sport that is vert traditional, mostly done at places like Eton. We ask this kid, who is ethnic Chinese, whether the white guys or Chinese guys are better opposition. He says remember he lives in Orange County, California – that he has never competed against a white guy, in fact he says he hs never seen a white guy fencing. Umm, very weird, why would the Chinese in Orange County be teaching their kids to fence, a traditional British sport …. I have no idea other than social climbing.

    Anyway, this lady, after she said she bought a house in Orange County, she said it was amazing but it was just two blocks away from her father’s best friend’s home. Anyway, the father’s best friend used to invite them around for parties and every time he used to give them ALL the left overs. So I – in my big mouth mode – said “what, as if you are homeless”.

    Five minutes later, my wife is talking to this woman about her kid’s university choice and woke. She has never heard of woke. My wife tries to explain to her, but the amount of data you have to convey is huge – who would ever believe woke exists unless they have seen it – so the woman blocks my wife. I say to her “If you send your child to a government establishment like a university, I suggest you do some research on the establishment first”. She immediately responds ” You accuse me of being homeless and now you are telling me I am a bad mother”. Umm, my first response was ” I did not say you were homeless, I said that you bought a home, next to your uncle, went to a party at your uncle’s house then he gave you all the left overs, as if you were homeless”. She refused to accept my explanation, so I left.

    I realised afterwards that Chinese people who live in Orange County have no idea of what is happening in America. Their kids do not see white people and they, as parents, do not understand normal white-person humour. My mother in law told me that, although this woman iives in America, and speaks English, she never mixes with white people, she lives in a Chinese village, she only speaks to Chinese people, she shops in Chinese shops (or vegetable shops for raw plants) and she eats Taiwanese food every day.

    I don’t blame her, I am in Taiwan and if I had decent beer, decent dairy, decent English-speaking company, then I would be swimming in that world. As it is, I have none of that, so I have to learn to love the Taiwanese culture.

    What blew me away about this conversation was that me saying a typical white guy phrase ” he gave you the left overs as if you were homeless” was interpreted by a California resident as an insult, even though they knwe that I knew they lives a block away from the party.

    I could teach you a lot of lessons about the Chinese, but most of you would not believe them, what with the western trend of people believing that China is the true, the real, communism. It is amazing how confused the west is about China, it is rather sad as it reveals the romantic preference of the west rather than the logical preference of the west.

    I don’t tell you about China because you – yes, all of you – are too biased in your romantic theory of life, to accept the reality of China. Maybe one day.

    #127003
    John Day
    Participant

    Last night AFKTT wrote the same thing that I thought:
    “The power ‘problem’ of Pakistan manifesting so soon after Brian Berletic highlighted Airstrip Two’s meddling in the region -inked earlier today- is very ‘interesting’.”

    #127004
    zerosum
    Participant

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

    Keep sending your war machines for Recycling.

    The Ukrainian regime deliberately bombs cities and towns using Western-supplied weapons,” the minister said.
    Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s position that it has not carried out attacks in Ukraine against civilian infrastructure, and that the damage to it is attributable to Kiev’s regular practice of deploying heavy weapons and air defense systems in residential areas.
    ——–
    Prigozhin said the US objective is to break up Russia just as it did to the USSR, then take on China.
    (Sanctions/Import fees/taxes)
    ———–

    The science of complex systems is never black or white.

    Stalactite vs. Stalagmite ( https://www.diffen.com/difference/Stalactite_vs_Stalagmite)

    Oil creation ( https://www.croftsystems.net/oil-gas-blog/how-was-oil-formed/#:~:text=The%20beginning%20of%20crude%20oil%20formation%20happened%20millions,multiple%20layers%20of%20sand%20and%20mud%20over%20time.

    don’t forget to include Time when doing EROI (energy returned for energy invested)

    Easy come, easy goes.
    ———-

    #127005
    Noirette
    Participant

    On Al Gore link, prev. thread. https://bit.ly/3kEwLpA

    A superficial piece, focusses on de-bunking dire climate change predictions.

    Gore’s fortune is not the outcome of scare tactics about global waming, but the result of various calculated exploitative schemes in Africa (imho.) To furnish electricity, phones, and (marginal) other, to poor Africans, plus using ‘remote’ African labor.

    Off the top of goog:

    Al Gore’s firm strikes $100M deal in Africa

    Jan 2019 https://pitchbook.com/newsletter/al-gores-firm-strikes-100m-deal-in-africa

    Al Gore’s Generation Investment launches $1.7 bln fund

    May 2022 reuters https://reut.rs/3WzYogA

    The beauty of this kind of biz is that if your customers (poor families with one bright light for child homework, one person in family with cell-phone to do essential biz, one smart remote worker supporting X others..) don’t pay…you just cut them off and they have no recourse.

    A.G. is one of the most rapacious evil biz men in the world, imho.

    I haven’t deep dived into it, just off the cuff. Investigating these kinds of biz. is needed…three books could be writ…

    #127006
    John Day
    Participant

    Go India!
    I had to stop the shiny chrome Kafka-rearranging-head. Too much.

    @Dr. D : Hey, you don’t work around, uh, you-know, “grey-hats” by any chance, do ya, pal?

    Aspnaz got sick of fighter-jocks in Stuttgart, too much like “Dubya”, who was a cocaine-pretend-fighter-jock in the Air National Guard during ‘Nam. He couldn’t test clean or pass physicals, but daddy got him through it. Frat-boy.

    #127007
    jb-hb
    Participant

    I had a strongly negative and positive reaction to the Kafka sculpture. Strange enough that I took some time to figure out exactly where the reactions were coming from.

    I think it comes down to – it’s actually not a bad idea for a Kafka sculpture. But in the middle of the modern West’s obsession with horrifyingly awful architecture and public “art,” it blends in. Considering the horrifying MLK sculpture, Kafka would need something extraordinarily clever and artistic to rise above ambient postmodernist radiation levels.

    #127008
    Noirette
    Participant

    I didn’t see this posted … but have been away.

    Inside Pfizer and AstraZeneca’s UKRAINIAN BIOLAB.

    #127009
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Re The Markster #127001

    I, too, when I read the top-image, intended headline felt indignant, and started going on the defense…but I have experience with this particular sort of tactic…

    I was married to a…very difficult individual for 12 years. He often accused me of thoughts or actions that were ludicrous to me, that I had never considered or done. I would suddenly be defending myself against these accusations, and he would discount every defense I put up, claiming that he somehow *knew* his accusation was accurate. These sessions would gradually deteriorate into detente. One day, I realized that I had evidence that he had done something that he had accused me of. It was something small — I don’t remember what it was. I kept this knowledge to myself and thought it over. What if, I mused, the things he accuses me of are thoughts and actions that he, himself, is guilty of? And the reason he claims that he *knows* I’m guilty is because he assumes everyone else thinks and acts just like him? I decided to be on the lookout for this. Every time he accused me of something I would simply deflect, instead of defend, and then observe and see whether or not he was guilty of it himself. After a few months, I realized that every time he made an accusation of me, I had a window into his mind — he was revealing his true, hidden self. What I saw wasn’t pretty. (Some time after that I discovered the terms “borderline personality disorder” and “narcissistic personality disorder” and realized that there are psychological terms and profiles that aptly describe the behaviors of my ex.)

    This article and its headline are examples of the behavior followed by my ex. The “anti-vaxxers” didn’t know in December 2020 – summer 2021 or so that the jabs were harmful — rather, we were highly suspicious and distrustful of the vaccines, the people promulgating them, the companies producing them, the process used to develop them, the science behind the biotechnology, etc. We didn’t know. We “smelled a rat.”

    The article headline is a form of gas-lighting. In the face of gas-lighting it is helpful to remind ourselves of the narrative of our personal experience, in order to reject the false narrative. Defending against gas-lighting can give strength to a lie.

    My elderly friends living in retirement communities were getting injected before I had thoroughly researched my opinion. My friends from church were posting pics of themselves getting jabbed on Facebook — and since there had been no in-person church meetings since March ‘20, there was never any chance to voice my suspicions face-to-face. The first people I warned were my parents — who forewent a cruise to remain unjabbed. Then I warned my closest elderly friends against the booster — they pooh-poohed my concerns and tut-tutted me for my perfidy in remaining Covid-vaccine free. Then I sent an email to my out-of-state siblings, begging them not to vaccinate their young children, citing some scientific studies, emphasizing how no long-term research has been done. From my sister I received no response. From my sister-in-law (and brother) I received an uncomfortable email indicating that they saw this as a decision internal to their family and saw my plea as inappropriate. What my out-of-state siblings may not have realized was that my plea was not just from me, it was from our parents and youngest sister as well – but the in-state family felt too uncomfortable to bring up the issue – so I risked social censure and sent the email on my own. I knew that I would feel worse if years later the out-of-state family came to me and said: You knew that this was harmful to our young children, and said nothing? So…I warned them. Earlier than that I hadn’t *known* it was so harmful, I just had suspicions.

    #127010
    Red
    Participant

    @ Noirette: warning: Rabbit hole ahead:

    An introduction to Morningstar’s body of work. By Jay Taber at Intercontinental Cry.

    In his seminal study Science of Coercion, Christopher Simpson observed that communication might be understood as both the conduit for and the actual substance of human culture and consciousness. As Simpson noted, psychological warfare is the application of mass communication to modern social conflict.

    In the U.S. Army War College manual on psychological warfare, the stated objective is to destroy the will and ability of the enemy to fight by depriving them of the support of allies and neutrals. Some of the methods used in the manual are sowing dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness.

    In the decades since these publications were first published, a new form of psywar has emerged in the form of false hope. With unlimited funding and organizational support from foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, Gates and Soros, U.S. Government propaganda now has a vast new army of non-profits that, along with corporate media and academia, serve as both a third wing of mass consciousness and a fifth column for destabilization campaigns worldwide.

    As Cory Morningstar captures The Simulacrum in her multi-part series on the non-profit industrial complex, domesticating the populace is a fait accompli, and the only question remaining is what will happen if and when capitalist activism is seen for what it is. By following the money from aristocratic derivatives to embodiments of false hope like Avaaz, MoveOn, and Change, Morningstar steps through the looking glass to expose how NGOs have become a key tool of global dominance using social media as a means of social manipulation.

    When the smoke generated by phony progressives clears, all that is left is an industrial wasteland of false hope and real threats. When the betrayals of NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are known, we can finally begin to exercise our responsibilities. Until then, programs like Democracy Now remain little more than adult versions of Sesame Street for the toy Che brigades.

    From the Non-Profit Industrial Complex with Love | The Art of Annihilation

    #127011
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Why didn’t the unvaxxed tell us?

    Initially, I didn’t take the injection which does not vaccinate because:

    1. Too lazy to go get one.
    2. FDA hasn’t approved it yet. I’ll wait on that
    3. Say, I vaguely remember, wasn’t there something in Zerohedge about this technology being tried a few years ago for SARS and all the test animals died?

    3 was just a vague thought at the back of my mind. Basically it was 1 and 2. When people asked me if I got it yet, I’d say “I’ll wait to see if it gets FDA approved after going through all the standard testing” That was the limit of my understanding.

    Certainly I’d say to anyone considering it – “I’m holding off for the moment. FDA hasn’t approved it yet. Vaccines go through testing to get safety approval.”

    So for anyone that got injected that was within earshot, they would have heard me say this quite clearly in earnest but calm tones.

    (and then explaining that the one shot that was FDA approved was not physically available and the physically available shots were not FDA approved seemed to be too complex a proposition. Nobody I gave this explanation to seemed to be able to grasp it, which is frightening and weird. Or the difference between emergency use approval and approval. Same.)

    I started researching when my employer started making noises about requiring it to keep a job. By then it was too late for everyone around me. Too late to supply details. I’ve impressed upon anyone I reasonably expected to listen that each booster will double your chances of adverse reactions. I’ve offered to email details on dangers and no one has taken me up on it.

    My job loss is certainly an issue for me and my wife. I’ve begged my wife for an extended time to watch an abridged version of Ron Johnson’s panel of scientists, doctors, journalists, and actuaries. To understand my decision, which she periodically demands an explanation of. She’ll watch a 4 hour video of a coworker’s speech along with others at a woke ngo function, because she was asked to, but she won’t watch the 1 hour explanation of my actions that she’s demanded.

    And that’s generally the thing. The people who bought into the initial injections refuse the mildest inconvenience to absorb any info.

    My brother in law is a saint. He’s been carrying his family and his business on his back for years. He is always, as far as I can see, trying to be virtuous – in a GOOD way for the most part. But of course, mainstream “virtue” is to take these shots.

    He started having problems losing consciousness. Repeatedly collapsing. (this was after the initial 2 part shot) His lifelong dream was to run his own business, which he was doing, starting only just recently. He concluded he must be experiencing too much stress and sold the business, remaining as an employee but taking a large hit to salary. The firm buying them out PROMISED it would be lower stress in various ways so he saw it as being worth handing off the burden… only it turns out it is MORE stressful under this company which is WAY less operationally competent compared to what his was on its own.

    He’s gotten every booster. He had to get surgery to repair his shoulder.

    I mildly, concernedly, sympathetically wondered to my wife which arm he got his shots in and if that lined up with the shoulder. Instant rage. I explained this is a real thing – shoulder surgery for injury following ANY vaccination in the matching arm, not just the covid one. Rage. Calmly offered to pull up the scientific info online and show her. Refusal. okay then.

    I suspect a lot of the “unvaxxed” have tried to warn to the extent of bandwidth available. For instance, I can’t directly approach my brother in law with this stuff. I am too far out there for him, much as I think well of him. But I might put a bug in his sister’s ear who might then hint that he should take a look at the data before taking more boosters.

    Another brother in law DID listen for a bit and I said if you take any boosters, just let me know and I will email you the bad and good lot #’s. You can then demand to see the lot# of your injection and at least avoid the worst odds. To my knowledge he hasn’t taken any boosters – he said he doesn’t plan to take any.

    I did have some conversations with coworkers and I referenced the most basic, easy to reason out info, careful to not trigger hostile reactions. Baby food versions of info – and got emotional irrational reactions in response.

    I don’t think they will even be able to remember our warnings as warnings.

    #127012
    Noirette
    Participant

    Illusory visions, one might even say crazy hopes, for societal transformation(s), in fact money-making scams.. if ..

    From *Harvard* Advanced Leadership Initiative. On Ukr. digital future.

    Digital Transformation in Ukraine: Before, During, and After the War.

    https://www.sir.advancedleadership.harvard.edu/articles/digital-transformation-in-ukraine-before-during-after-war

    Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building.

    twitter. Vid 2.5 mins.

    #127013
    Noirette
    Participant

    Red, thanks for the response. More another time.

    #127014
    jb-hb
    Participant

    phoenixvoice – I am right there with you in my experience the Cluster-B/Narc/Borderline stuff. You put it in such a pragmatically useful way as well.

    I’ve noticed a trend.

    1. People wearing various analytical hats – cultural, economic, political, etc going down a rabbit hole on how screwed up their area of narrow interest is becoming only to discover NPD and say HOLY #%#@^!!!! It’s THIS! (Anne Barnhart, for instance)

    2. People specializing in dealing with abuse from Cluster-B / Narcs / Borderline slowly looking up from their specialty to look at general societal/cultural/political trends and saying HOLY #%#@^!!!! It’s THIS! (Richard Grannon, for instance)

    If I were to anthropomorphize/hypothesize there being a specific entity sitting behind all the trends & forces screwing everything up, making everyone miserable, I think I could diagnose it as a malignant narcissist. If I were to present a glossary of terms, you could lay them over the top and see a perfect match. Maybe I’ll work on something like that to post here – word salading, grey rock, induced conversation, future-faking, etc.

    #127015
    John Day
    Participant

    I’m almost at the point of wondering whether inspection teams are going in with “throw-down” classified documents. Some have shown up at Mike’s place now.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/classified-documents-found-mike-pences-house

    Did nobody look in the past? Seems like that would have been polite.

    #127016

    “Classified documents found at Pence’s Indiana home”

    Another VP who had no business taking docs home. A pattern? Who else had what at which home?

    #127017

    German media say the country will deliver tanks to Ukraine, and allow other countries to do the same.

    It’s assisted suicide for Ukrainian soldiers.

    #127018

    #127019
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks jb-hb and Phoenixvoice. Your life experiences are useful to consider. We all seek to be helpful, but are often rejected by the “marks”, who can’t bear to consider that they have been deceived so completely.
    It’s too horrible to think about, so take the next step.
    Show faith!
    🙁

    #127020
    John Day
    Participant

    So the US will send M1 Abrams tanks, the most complicated tanks, to Ukraine, where crews will be trained for at least 5 years in how to operate and maintain them. Germany ditto for Leopard main battle tanks, almost as complicated.
    This looks like a price being paid to maintain a certain propaganda fiction about supporting-Ukraine-for-the-win.
    I suspect the Russians will keep letting this fiction be promulgated, because they get to destroy expensive and only-slowly-replaceable military equipment of their “western partners”, in as low-threat of a setting as possible.

    #127021
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Classified documents must be distributed in D.C. by newsboys riding bicycles every morning, delivered just in time to be read over a nice cup of coffee before heading off to another busy day of grifting in the swamp.

    By the way, has anybody but me wondered what the fuck any of those “classified documents” contain, in even the most generalized sense of subject matter or topic? Sorry, that’s classified.

    #127022
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Remember the Ukranian official whose helicopter blew up? I figured it was infighting as opposed to Russian action

    Ukraine Rocked By Corruption Scandal, Wave Of Top Officials Resign: Sports Cars, Mansions & Luxury Vacations As People Suffered
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-rocked-corruption-scandal-wave-top-official-resignations-sports-cars-mansions

    doing absolutely no research, my first thought is – so his deadman switch went off?

    We should do Ukrainians a favor and pre-weld the hatches shut on the tanks for them before delivery.

    #127023
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    There seems to be a close relationship between sophistication and deceit.

    #127024
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    The real America that is never mentioned by the mainstream media, and glimpse into what’s coming to much of the industrial world very soon.

    #127025
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Americans are cunts, the religious people will kill anybody to defend America, the left wing woke people will discretely change your child’s sex. Americans are cunts.”

    I’m not. I’m a prick.

    ***

    As for about-face perspectives on covid: it’s all over but the shouting, the hitting, and the shooting. Reason need not apply in such direly emotional circumstances.Expectations of justice and mutual understanding are the primary good intentions by which the road to hell is paved.

    ***

    “If I were to anthropomorphize/hypothesize there being a specific entity sitting behind all the trends & forces screwing everything up, making everyone miserable, I think I could diagnose it as a malignant narcissist.”

    Oh, you mean humanity? I met humanity once. The dialog boiled down to the old joke:

    What do you think about the growing apathy?

    I don’t know and I don’t care.

    #127026
    zerosum
    Participant

    What do you know. What do you care. Ukraine? Covid? Inflation? Starvation? Secrets?

    Majority say, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

    #127027
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Of course, one will receive mostly emotional reactions to challenging covid vax info. The entire covid phenom was run on emotions. So we will of course expend gobs of energy on how we feel about covid rather than try to understand the actual physics of simple thing like Medicine Kill You.

    One “wins” arguments not much by logic, but by emotional manipulation. We demonstrate it here everyday. Not the “winning” so much as the manipulation.

    Diablo

    #127028
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “I don’t tell you about China because you – yes, all of you – are too biased in your romantic theory of life, to accept the reality of China. Maybe one day.”

    Such a heavy burden

    #127029
    jb-hb
    Participant

    The observable behavior is anti-human. NPD being the human being rotting away, leaving the protective shell to go on. Possible the protective shell itself killed them. Significant human faculties are absent, leaving you something that is higher IQ yet “cognitively challenged” and hostile to human cognition where and when it finds it. I’m not about to lump that in with humanity. Also considering the observable long term massive energy inputs required by it/them to keep this dynamic going. Like seeing water transported uphill and saying “gravity. waddayagonnado?”

    Speaking of humans, interestingly Brett Weinstein, subjected to this behavior in one area, recognized it in another and has done absolutely wonderful insightful work on covid as well as AI and elsewhere on the Dark Horse podcast, guest appearances with Joe Rogan, etc. Probably because he recognized the same dynamics in play.

    #127030
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    bosco wrote:

    ‘So we will of course expend gobs of energy on how we feel about covid rather than try to understand the actual physics of simple thing like Medicine Kill You.’

    I found it fascinating that when Barbara McKerrow was appointed as CEO of New Plymouth Deceit and Crime (District Council), the local propaganda outlet (Taranaki Daily News) did a front-page feature article on her/it. The focus of her/its narrative was how we feel. Not anything in the real world that might impact on the future of the district -such as the energy supply, the desecration of the environment, the total lack of planning etc. but how we feel.

    The focus of policy of New Plymouth Deceit and Crime was ‘vibrancy’. ‘Creating a vibrant community’ via the squandering of energy and resources and the destruction of nature.

    After many years of grifting the system and lying continuously in order to do so, and after shafting numerous other people (including all the ratepayers of the district) McKerrow was eventually forced to resign because of repeated blatant lying that could not be covered up any longer.

    Similar with respect to The Scorpion, of course. Lied to get into office. Lied continuously whilst in office. When the plethora of lies became impossible to defend and the consequences of the lies became dire, The Scorpion resigned.

    Replaced by Crazy Chipmunk, ‘Chippy’, (Chris Hopkins) yet another professional liar with zero credibility.

    Such is life in The Empire of Lies.

    Sick and evil is a gross understatement when describing the maniacs that comprise the political order on Airstrip Five (and the other Airstrips) who acquire and maintain power via deceit and censorship.

    #127031
    BoomerDoomer2
    Participant

    Why I didn’t get the jab… After spending 100’s of hours researching the topic, I just decided to flip a coin. Heads, I don’t get jab, Tails, I don’t get the jab.( For background see Jimmy Dore on Scott Adams; Scott Adams claims that “anti-vaxxers” simply flipped a coin and got lucky)

    #127032
    Adlertag
    Participant

    Zelensky is the most vomit inducing pile of s**t, sold his nation down the river to line his own pockets and those of his mentors.
    I hope history catches up with him and the orchestrators of this bloodbath soon. As a young girl wrote a few months ago ‘We are all Z’, all of us who stand against the tidal wave of western immorality and corruption

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