Jan 052023
 
 January 5, 2023  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Takeuchi Seiho Bear in snow 1940

 

US Climbs Escalation Ladder in Ukraine (Bhadrakumar)
U.S. Forces in Europe Prepare for War With Russia (Celente)
The Russia-Ukraine Conflict Is Existential For Both Sides (Lukyanov)
Effect Of EU Sanctions On Moscow Is ‘Less Than Zero’ – Verhofstadt (RT)
Russian Drones Far Cheaper Than Ukrainian Air Defenses – NYT (RT)
US Makes Europeans Suffer – De Gaulle’s Grandson (RT)
China Setting New World Energy Order – Zoltan Pozsar (RT)
US Spies Used False Russiagate Claims To Bring Twitter To Heel (Livshitz)
Schiff Asked Twitter to Censor Paul Sperry Over Impeachment Whistleblower (BB)
Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads (Taibbi)
Breathing Trouble (Bardi/Walach)
Swedes Adamant In Face Of Türkiye’s NATO Demands (RT)
A History of Dissent (Lauria)
Post-vaccine Treatment Protocol (FLCCC)

 

 

There is so much talk about McCarthy and the House Speaker contest, you’d almost think they’re trying to hide something behind it. I’ll leave that alone for now.

 

 

 

 

Bhakdi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610685980671094784

 

 

 

 

VDB
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610443745014710278

 

 

 

 

Cause unknown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..although Russian intelligence would have a fair idea of the location of NATO officers conducting the Ukrainian operations, they have not been so far targeted.”

US Climbs Escalation Ladder in Ukraine (Bhadrakumar)

In all probability, the message conveyed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov from his American counterpart Antony Blinken via Israel’s new foreign minister Eli Cohen concerned the Ukrainian missile attack on Makeyevka (Donetsk) on New Year Day at 12.02 am killing 89 Russian conscripts. Kiev claimed that up to 400 Russian soldiers might have been killed. Russian MOD has made a rare acknowledgment of scores of deaths — latest figure is 83. Moscow rarely releases figures for casualties in the war. The Russian statements stressed that US-made Himars missiles were used in the attack. The site was a “a temporary deployment facility” (a vocational school temporarily used as barracks for scores of recently mobilised troops sent by Moscow.

The incident sparked renewed public criticism over the state of Russia’s military and the decision to use civilian infrastructure to house soldiers. The First Deputy Head of the Main Military-Political Department of the Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Sergey Sevryukov told reporters: “It has already become obvious at present that the main cause of the occurrence was activation and large-scale use, contrary to the ban, of personal phones by personnel within the reach of enemy’s destruction means. This factor enabled the enemy to take the bearing and determine coordinates of servicemen location to deliver a missile strike. Required measures are being taken at present to exclude such tragic incidents in the future.” Apparently, blame game has begun — that the “main cause” of the tragedy was the unruly behaviour of soldiers who used mobile phones on the warfront. But there is going to be consequences.

Public pressure may increase demanding maximum use of force to end the war quickly. There is always the danger of escalation if certain unwritten, unspoken red lines in the conduct of the war are crossed. It is entirely conceivable that there could be Cold-War style “strategic deconfliction” parameters worked out between the general staff in Moscow and the Pentagon aimed at avoiding miscalculation or any set of actions (by either side) that could lead to unnecessary conflict. The US and Russian forces have been operating in Syria for years and a communications line, used daily, has helped the two sides avoid direct conflict.

Now, the New Year attack comes as the Biden administration is trying to provide billions in weaponry to Ukraine while also claiming that avoiding a direct clash with Russia has been a top US priority. At any rate, although Russian intelligence would have a fair idea of the location of NATO officers conducting the Ukrainian operations, they have not been so far targeted. That is why, the Russian MOD’s decision on Monday to highlight that US-supplied Himars missiles have killed scores of Russian soldiers on Sunday night would have caused some uneasiness in Washington. The big question is whether Moscow will also now go up the escalation ladder and directly target American military personnel deployed in Ukraine.

Of course, any killing of American military personnel in Ukraine will make very damaging headlines in the US news cycle for the Biden Administration. So far, there has not been a single instance of a body bag arriving from Ukraine. The Russian generals probably ensured that.

Read more …

The US will let other countries’ troops do the combat.

U.S. Forces in Europe Prepare for War With Russia (Celente)

U.S. troops stationed in Eastern Europe are preparing for all-out war and have been performing war simulations against Russian forces, according to a new report. The U.S.’s 101st Airborne Division deployed to Romania for the first time in 80 years. The “Screaming Eagles” as a light infantry force that is trained to take to any battlefield and fight within hours. The U.S. Army said in a statement in June that the division arrived at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase to “reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and engage in multinational exercises with partners across the European continent in order to reassure allies and deter further Russian aggression.” “Being here, so close to that fight (in Ukraine), is exactly where the 101st Airborne Division is destined to be,” said Maj. Gen. JP McGee, 101st commander, during the livestreamed ceremony, Stars & Stripes reported at the time.

U.S. infantry arrived at a military base in Estonia last month to train allied troops and secure Europe’s eastern flank amid the Ukraine War. The troops are stationed at the Taara base in Võru and will train alongside Estonia forces. The base is about 20 miles from the Russian border. The troops in Romania have been training Ukrainian forces on advanced weapons systems that are being shipped into Kyiv, The New York Times reported. “You get a chance to train and operate on the very ground that you might have to defend,” McGee told the paper. AntiWar.org noted: “The Times report stressed that the 101st Airborne deployment was about deterrence. If the US were preparing to enter the war directly, it would likely send significantly more troops. While in Romania, the soldiers are also participating in coastal defense drills, and Romanian troops are practicing firing HIMARS rocket launch systems into the Black Sea.”

The Pentagon has said it is sending U.S. troops into Ukraine, under the guise that they are going there not to fight, but instead just to track the billions of dollars of weapons the West sent into the country. NBC News, citing three senior U.S. officials, reported last month that there is discussion in the White House about sending additional troops into the country to help the U.S. track weapons. The report said there are already U.S. troops in the country, again, under the guise that all they are doing is monitoring weapons. The New York Times reported in June that Ukraine is filled with CIA officers and special forces from the West. The report said the CIA personnel have been working out of Kyiv. We reported in October that there are currently more U.S. special forces and CIA agents in Ukraine today than there were at the beginning of the war.

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“No mere recital from the actor, but earnest loss he must reveal..”

The Russia-Ukraine Conflict Is Existential For Both Sides (Lukyanov)

The year 2022 turned everything inside out. With the benefit of hindsight – having overcome the shock everyone experienced in February, when Russian troops entered Ukraine – it’s not that difficult to explain how it came about. And even how it could not have been otherwise. Also, after a full ten months, it is pretty clear why the campaign did not go as planned. The latter is probably even a positive thing. The façade crumbled, exposing the frame. It was not quite as imagined. Some structures thought to be load-bearing had surprisingly sagged. Others, suspected of being unreliable, stood up stronger than had been thought. There are fewer illusions, though the information machine works to maintain them. But this is basically by inertia. The need for a radical renewal of the architecture is obvious.

The Ukrainian landmine was laid when the Soviet Union collapsed. The grim realists knew from the outset that the separation of what had long been a single space – where it was almost impossible to draw a natural boundary – would not be possible. In Russia, as at the bottom of a peat bog, disagreement with the loss of territories of defining cultural and historical significance was smoldering. In Ukraine, radical nationalists lamented that independence came ‘cost-free’ and believed that nations are born in wars. The extremes have now converged. Russia took up the Ukrainian issue when it became central to the world order. Although it may have been the other way round – it became so important because Russia tried to solve it. The tipping point was probably former President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision on whether to tilt West (to the EU) or East (towards the EEU), back in 2013.

The two divergent positions are now firmly entwined. And our country faces fierce resistance, because of the desire of the neighboring state to defend its identity, and the readiness of Western grandees to sacrifice this very nation to put Moscow in its place. However, Russia voluntarily submitted itself to this stress test, and its future depends on the outcome. At this juncture, it is no longer possible to reverse course. Furthermore, the uncertainty of the objectives of the ‘special military operation’ reflects the overarching nature of the challenge. The goals won’t be fully understood until the end, because they won’t be apparent until that comes to pass. The peculiarity of the modern world is that there is no such thing as an outright victory. This is the main paradox here – war has returned as a form of state relations, but it does not involve a clear outcome in the classical sense.

This dramatically complicates the nature of competition and makes it inherently non-linear. And its result is thus ‘hybrid’, with the decisive factor the endurance and resilience of states under the volley of different blows that abound in the unpredictable international environment. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has become a clash for self-determination for Russia as much as for Ukraine. In the literal sense: as in who we are. While Ukraine’s self-determination is similar to examples from the history of nation-state building, in Russia the situation is far more complex. Many of the concepts from the past will not pass the test of this collision. Outright archaic positions are unsustainable in today’s global conditions, even if it seems that the world has turned backwards. But postmodern imitation will no longer work either. It’s too real and tragic. “No mere recital from the actor, but earnest loss he must reveal,” to quote the writer Boris Pasternak, in his poem ‘I Should Have Known that this Would Happen’.

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“We are rewarding Russia for its war against us!”

Russia has no war vs the EU. You’re just making that up.

Effect Of EU Sanctions On Moscow Is ‘Less Than Zero’ – Verhofstadt (RT)

The EU’s sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict have been a complete failure, Belgian member of the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt said on Monday. He added that the EU was only “rewarding” Russia by increasing imports from the country. Writing on Twitter, Verhofstadt, who served as Belgian prime minister from 1999 to 2008 and has been an MEP since 2009, claimed that the effect of the EU’s nine packages of sanctions on Moscow “is less than 0.” The former PM said that in the bloc’s attempts to punish Russia, it has achieved the opposite result. “We are rewarding Russia for its war against us!” Verhofstadt also posted a chart titled ‘Still Filling Putin’s Coffers’, showing Russia-EU trade from February to August 2022. The graphic, which cites Eurostat data, shows that most EU member states, including Germany, France, Italy, and Poland, significantly increased imports from Russia. In total, only seven EU members were buying less from the country.


Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the EU imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow, targeting entire sectors of the economy. In December, the bloc, along with the G7 countries and Australia, introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, setting it at $60 per barrel. In response, last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning the supply of oil and petroleum products from Russia to countries which apply these restrictions. The sanctions on Russia have exacerbated the bloc’s energy crisis, causing fuel prices and the cost of living to soar. This has prompted protests against the sanctions policy in several EU countries. In December, a demonstration organized by the right-wing Patriots party took place in Paris against the government’s stance on Russia and France’s membership in NATO. In his New Year’s address, Putin said that the West’s “full-blown sanctions war” against Moscow has largely failed to undermine the economy.

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“..using a missile against a UAV costs up to seven times more than the drone itself..”

Russian Drones Far Cheaper Than Ukrainian Air Defenses – NYT (RT)

The fact that the smaller kamikaze drones used by Russia are much cheaper than the Ukrainian air defense missiles used against them is creating problems for Kiev and its Western backers, the New York Times has acknowledged. In an article on Tuesday, the paper didn’t question Kiev’s claims that most of the UAVs launched by Russia are being shot down, but pointed out that even in this case Ukrainian air defense stocks were being exhausted. “How long can Ukraine sustain its effort when many of its defensive measures cost far more than the drones do?” the NYT wondered. In addition to trying to destroy the incoming drones with anti-aircraft guns and small-arms fire, Kiev’s forces have “also relied heavily on missiles fired from warplanes and the ground,” which are very expensive, it wrote.

The paper cited the head of the Ukrainian consultancy Molfar, Artem Starosiek, who claimed that using a missile against a UAV costs up to seven times more than the drone itself. The drones that Russia uses are priced at around $20,000 per unit, while a surface-to-air missile from Ukraine’s arsenal ranges from $140,000 for a Soviet-era S-300 to $500,000 for a US-supplied NASAM system, he said. The article claims that the drones used by Russia in Ukraine are Shahed-136s, supplied by Iran. This claim has been denied by both Moscow and Tehran on many occasions. The Russian Defense Ministry insists that its Geran-2 drones are domestically made, just like all the other hardware used in the military operation against Kiev. The Iranian Foreign Ministry has only confirmed sending a small batch of drones to Russia before the outbreak of the conflict with Ukraine, stressing that no new deliveries have been made since then.

Starosiek nevertheless defended Kiev’s strategy, arguing that it still “costs far less to shoot down a drone than to repair a damaged or destroyed power station.” However, the NYT warned that the price difference between drones and air defenses was “an imbalance that could over time favor Russia, costing Ukraine and its allies dearly, some analysts say.” According to estimations by Molfar, Russia has targeted Ukrainian military infrastructure and energy systems with some 600 UAVs since September, when they began to be used more widely. Russia drastically ramped up its strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure in early October in response to repeated Ukrainian sabotage on Russian soil, including the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, which Moscow blamed on Kiev. Although the attack was widely cheered by top Ukrainian officials, Kiev has denied any involvement.

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“I revolt and protest this intellectual dishonesty in the Ukraine crisis because the triggers of the war are the Americans and NATO..”

US Makes Europeans Suffer – De Gaulle’s Grandson (RT)

The US is making Europeans suffer by fueling the Ukraine conflict and waging a pre-planned economic war against Russia, Pierre de Gaulle, the grandson of former French President Charles de Gaulle, has said. After leading the French resistance against the Nazi occupation during World War II, Charles de Gaulle founded the modern French political system and served as president from 1959 to 1969. His grandson, a strategy and corporate finance consultant, said he believes that the Ukraine conflict was incited by the West. “I revolt and protest this intellectual dishonesty in the Ukraine crisis because the triggers of the war are the Americans and NATO,” Pierre de Gaulle told the Franco-Russian Dialogue Association last week. “The United States, unfortunately, continues the military escalation, making not only the Ukrainian population suffer, but the European population as well.”

The scale and the number of sanctions show that all of this was organized a long time in advance. It is an economic war, from which the Americans are the beneficiaries. The Americans sell their gas to Europeans for a price four to seven times higher than they do in their own country. The Western sanctions imposed on Russian fossil fuel exports have exacerbated the financial and energy crisis in Europe, making “everyone suffer in their daily lives,” de Gaulle said. He also accused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel of “knowingly contributing” to the conflict by “authorizing the Ukrainian nationalist expansion,” which came after the 2014 pro-Western coup in Kiev. The government that came to power that year sought to “annihilate Russian culture… and the ability to speak Russian” in the largely Russophone Donbass, he said.

The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) broke away from Ukraine following the 2014 coup. The 2014-15 Minsk accords, brokered by Germany, France, and Russia, were designed to provide a peaceful reintegration of the rebellious territories into Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the need to protect the people of Donbass and Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk peace accords as reasons for launching the military operation in Ukraine in late February. The DPR and LPR, along with two other former Ukrainian territories, joined Russia after voting overwhelmingly in favor of the move in September. Merkel, as well as former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, stated last year that Kiev had used the accords to buy time in order to rebuild its military and economy. Ukraine has adopted several laws since 2014 that restrict the use of the Russian language in the public sphere, including education and the media.

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“..Xi Jinping’s meeting with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in December marked “the birth of the petroyuan..”

China Setting New World Energy Order – Zoltan Pozsar (RT)

The global energy order is being reshaped as deepening energy ties between China and the Middle East signifies the rise of the petroyuan, which could challenge the petrodollar, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing Credit Suisse analyst Zoltan Pozsar. According to Pozsar, China has been boosting purchases of crude and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and some African nations using its national currency. However, President Xi Jinping’s meeting with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in December marked “the birth of the petroyuan,” he said in a note to clients. At the summit, the Chinese leader confirmed that Beijing is ready to make energy purchases in yuan instead of the US dollar with GCC countries.

“China wants to rewrite the rules of the global energy market,” Pozsar said, adding that the move to de-dollarize the oil and gas trade is backed members of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). According to the Credit Suisse analyst, the steps towards ditching the greenback in the energy trade have intensified in the wake of the sweeping sanctions imposed by Western nations on Russia, one of the world’s major energy producers and exporters, in response to the military operation in Ukraine. Pozsar added that dollar foreign exchange reserves were militarized in the sanctions war, making the use of the currency unsafe for major exporters and importers of oil, gas, and other commodities.

Cooperation between China and the GCC may potentially involve joint exploration and production in places such as the South China Sea, as well as investment in refineries, chemicals, and plastics. Pozsar said that implementing all of these projects in the yuan would mark a massive shift in the global energy trade. He added that even if it does not replace the dollar as a reserve currency, trading in the petroyuan will nevertheless come with significant economic and financial implications for policymakers and investors.

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“Twitter was flooded with demands from so many officials, departments and agencies, they were confused and overworked. If action wasn’t taken promptly, followup emails quickly appeared, asking if action had yet been taken, and if not, why..”

US Spies Used False Russiagate Claims To Bring Twitter To Heel (Livshitz)

In a pair of blockbuster #TwitterFiles threads, this week, journalist Matt Taibbi has blown open, even wider, the media giant’s concerning collusion with the US national security state. The former Rolling Stone writer exposed how political pressure from the US Democratic Party very effectively forced the company to endorse the lie that its platform was extensively weaponized by Russia, with hugely significant consequences. The first, boldly titled ‘How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In’, documents how in August 2017, despite dubious allegations that Russian bots and trolls were responsible for the election of Donald Trump in the mainstream media reaching fever pitch, Twitter’s hierarchy knew its platform wasn’t riddled with malign Kremlin-directed actors. [..]

After years of bending over backwards to placate the Democratic establishment, Twitter attempted to push back. Over a series of internal emails, various executives spelled out deep concerns about allowing the Center any influence over the platform, and initially rejected an FBI request for the organization to be included in the moderation club’s regular ‘industry call’. It was felt the Center’s involvement would pose “major risks … especially as the election heats up.” Eventually, the FBI offered a compromise – the CIA, NSA, and Global Engagement Center would be able to simply listen to the industry calls, but wouldn’t be active participants. Twitter relented, a decision its higher-ups seem to have quickly come to regret. Before long, the social network was being bombarded with requests to censor content and ban users from every US government body under the sun.

This extended to US government officials asking for users to be banned because they didn’t personally like an individual in question. Notorious House Intelligence Committee chief Adam Schiff, a Democrat, once asked Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry, due to his critical reporting on the Committee’s work. After initially refusing, Sperry was later suspended. Almost every other request was granted immediately, even those from the Global Engagement Center. This included demands to ban independent media outlets falsely claimed to be “GRU-controlled” and linked “to the Russian government.” In one email, a former CIA staffer remarked that Twitter would soon be unable to deny a single request. “Our window on that is closing,” they said.

In the weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, Twitter was flooded with demands from so many officials, departments and agencies, they were confused and overworked. If action wasn’t taken promptly, followup emails quickly appeared, asking if action had yet been taken, and if not, why, and when it would be. In one request, an FBI official even apologized “in advance for your workload.” Once, a no doubt exhausted senior attorney at the social network complained internally, “my inbox is really f***ed up at this point.” Previous #TwitterFiles threads exposed how the FBI paid the social network $3 million to process its requests. Based on the most recent disclosures, it’s clear the company and its staff were significantly underpaid for their efforts. Future releases promise yet further bombshell revelations, but the long-hidden truths divulged so far should prompt every Twitter user to reflect how the site for many years in secret operated as an effective wing of the US intelligence – and may well still do so.

Tucker Russia

Read more …

He should disappear.

Schiff Asked Twitter to Censor Paul Sperry Over Impeachment Whistleblower (BB)

House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) pressured Twitter to censor the account of Paul Sperry, an investigative journalist who first published the name of the so-called impeachment “whistleblower.” In September 2019, Schiff announced that his committee had reached an agreement with the “whistleblower,” who allegedly filed a complaint about President Donald Trump’s July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to testify in his inquiry, which became the impeachment investigation. But Schiff never produced the whistleblower and later claimed, falsely, that the whistleblower had a “right” to anonymity. Schiff also lied about his contact with the “whistleblower,” first claiming that his committee had never spoken to the whistleblower, then admitting — after a New York Times report to the contrary — that they had done so.

Later, Sperry published an article at RealClearInvestigations identifying the “whistleblower” as a CIA analyst named Eric Ciaramella, who had worked at the Trump White House before returning to the CIA. Sperry also published other articles identifying links between Schiff’s committee and aides who had worked at the Trump White House and who had been “holdovers” from the Obama administration. The media and the tech industry suppressed the name of the whistleblower, and Schiff refused to allow Republicans to ask questions about the whistleblower during the impeachment investigation. Even Chief Justice John Roberts played along, censoring a question from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) during the Senate impeachment trial about the whistleblower.

On Tuesday, in the latest installment of the “Twitter files,” investigative journalist Matt Taibbi produced email evidence showing that Schiff’s office had asked Twitter, in writing, to censor Sperry after the November 2020 election, claiming (without evidence) that Sperry had spread “QAnon conspiracies” on the platform. Sperry told the New York Post Tuesday that Schiff’s claims were false and that he had never promoted QAnon: In an email Tuesday, Sperry told The Post, “I have never promoted any ‘QAnon conspiracies.’ Ever. Not on Twitter. Not anywhere.” “Schiff was just angry I outed his impeachment whistleblower and tried to get me banned,” he said. “I challenge Schiff to produce evidence to back up his defamatory remarks to Twitter.” Sperry also said, “This is a scurrilous smear, but par for the course for the unscrupulous Chairman Schiff.”

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Library.

Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads (Taibbi)

It’s January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month. Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven’t from the beginning, I’ve written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each. At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones) who’ve found some of the alphabet-soup government agency names confusing, I’ve included a brief glossary of terms to help as well.

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Masks.

Breathing Trouble (Bardi/Walach)

Just like smoking a single cigarette never killed anyone, wearing a face mask for a few hours or a few days does not cause irreversible damage either. But the immediate short-term physiological effects are detectable: A recent study led by Pritam Sukul, senior medical scientist at the University Medicine Rostock in Germany, found masks to cause hypercarbia (high concentration of CO2 in the blood), arterial oxygen decline, blood pressure fluctuations, and concomitant physiological and metabolic effects. On a time scale of weeks or months, these effects appear to be reversible. But how can we know what can happen to people who wear masks for several hours a day for several years? Will we have to wait for decades before concluding that masks are bad for people s health, as was the case with cigarettes?

Not necessarily, for we are able to assess face masks in terms of the air quality breathed by the wearers. One important parameter for air quality is CO2 concentration. Over the years, a lot of data has been accumulated in this field from miners, astronauts, submariners, and other people exposed to high concentrations of CO2 . Measurable negative effects on mental alertness already occur at CO2 concentrations over 600 parts per million (ppm), which is only slightly higher than the average concentration in open air (a little more than 400 ppm). Values higher than 1,000-2,000 ppm are not recommended for living spaces, especially for children and pregnant women. 5,000 ppm is the commonly accepted limit in working environments or in submarines and spaceships. Concentrations in the range of 10,000-20,000 ppm are not immediately life-threatening but can only be withstood for short periods.

Even higher concentrations may lead to loss of consciousness and death. So what kind of CO2 concentration are people exposed to when they wear a face mask? Measuring the concentration of CO2 inside the small volume of a face mask while it is being used poses practical problems, and there are no standardised methods and procedures to evaluate this. Nevertheless, during the past few years, several papers dealing with this subject were published. Some of these papers were criticised, but often baselessly. For instance, some fact checkers claimed that the same amount of CO2 could be found without face masks in exhaled breath. This is true, but trivial. The studies mentioned above measured the amount of CO2 in the inhaled air under face masks; the fact checkers measured the air exhaled. Other fact checkers provided a priori statements by experts, including a sports reporter.

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“..79% of respondents think their country should “stand up for Swedish laws” in the face of Türkiye’s demands..”

Swedes Adamant In Face Of Türkiye’s NATO Demands (RT)

An overwhelming majority of Swedes believe their country should not betray its legal principles to meet Türkiye’s conditions for ratifying Stockholm’s NATO bid, according to a new Ipsos poll commissioned by Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and released on Monday. The survey found that 79% of respondents think their country should “stand up for Swedish laws” in the face of Türkiye’s demands. This red line, they said, should not be crossed even “if that delays joining NATO.” Only 10% said that “Sweden should try to join NATO as soon as possible,” even if it entails legal compromises, while 11% said they were not sure.

The poll shows only minor discrepancies in opinion between various social groups. Men are said to be more open to compromises with Ankara than women, although they also tend to insist on protecting the country’s legal principles. As for differences along political lines, those who vote for right-wing parties are more inclined to agree to a give-and-take approach. Despite the delays in joining NATO, the poll revealed that as many as 60% of Swedes still want to become part of the US-led military bloc, with only 19% opposing Stockholm’s membership bid. The survey, which was conducted between December 6 and 18, is based on 1,248 interviews with Swedish voters.

In June, NATO agreed to accept Sweden and Finland to the bloc, but their membership bid has yet to be ratified by all members of the alliance, with Hungary and Türkiye’s approval still pending. Ankara has been reluctant to finalize the accession process, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushing Sweden and Finland to do more to combat Kurdish “terrorism,” including extraditing people that Türkiye accuses of having terrorist links. In early December, Sweden reportedly made some progress in this regard, handing over a man to Türkiye who had been convicted in his home country of being a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Two weeks later, however, Sweden’s Supreme Court blocked the extradition of Bulent Kenes, a former editor-in-chief of Zaman Daily who Ankara accused of being involved in an attempt to topple Erdogan in 2016.

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Good to remember.

A History of Dissent (Lauria)

The United States was founded by dissenters. The Declaration of Independence is one of history’s most significant dissenting documents, inspiring people seeking freedom around the world, from the French revolutionists to Ho Chi Minh, who based Vietnam’s declaration of independence from France on the American declaration. But over the centuries a corrupt centralization of American power seeking to maintain and expand its authority has at times sought to crush the very principle of dissent which was written into the United States Constitution. Freedom to dissent was first threatened by the second president. Just eight years after the adoption of the Bill of Rights, press freedom had become a threat to John Adams, whose Federalist Party pushed through Congress the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.

They criminalized criticism of the federal government. There were 25 prosecutions and 10 convictions, under the Sedition Act. The acts expired and some repealed by 1802. The Union then shut down newspapers during the U.S. Civil War. Woodrow Wilson came within one vote in the Senate of creating official government censorship in the 1917 Espionage Act. The 1918 Alien and Sedition Act that followed jailed hundreds of people for speech until it was repealed in 1921. Since the 1950s, McCarthyism has become the byword for one of the worst periods of repression of dissent in U.S. history. The closest we’ve come to Wilson’s troubling dream is the Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Homeland Security, which after heavy criticism was disbanded.

The roots of repression are in the earliest English settlers in North America, described in The Scarlet Letter and applied to McCarthyism in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Though its industrial and scientific achievements are most lauded, America’s tradition of dissent is probably the greatest thing in U.S. history and it is once again under threat.

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Protocol to get rid of vaxx.

Post-vaccine Treatment Protocol (FLCCC)

Major public health authorities do not recognize post-COVID-vaccine injuries and no official definition exists. However, a temporal correlation between receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and the beginning or worsening of a patient’s clinical manifestations is sufficient to diagnose a COVID-19 vaccine-induced injury, when symptoms are otherwise unexplained by concurrent causes. Since there are no published reports detailing how to manage vaccine-injured patients, our treatment approach is based on the postulated pathogenetic mechanism, clinical observation, and patient anecdotes. Treatment must be individualized according to each patient’s presenting symptoms and disease syndromes. Chances are, not all patients will respond equally to the same intervention; a particular intervention may be life-saving for one patient and completely ineffective for another. Early treatment is essential; the response to treatment will most likely be attenuated when treatment is delayed.

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Trump 1991

 

 

 

Musk electric planes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610745168743006209

 

 

Tiger spoons

 

 

Sunfish

 

 

Octopus

 

 

Samoyed

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle January 5 2023

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  • #125079

    Takeuchi Seiho Bear in snow 1940   • US Climbs Escalation Ladder in Ukraine (Bhadrakumar) • U.S. Forces in Europe Prepare for War With Russia (Ce
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 5 2023]

    #125080
    Germ
    Participant

    Yesterday I recounted a friend’s sister-in-law in ICU whose daughter had died unexpectedly last year.

    I woke up today with this message from him:

    ” Just to let you know Tessa died this afternoon undiagnosed ….peaceful in the end thankfully ….but ….I wonder what the autopsy will reveal ??? 😥 ”

    TVASF

    ps. Thanks Dr. John for your expression of sympathy.

    #125082
    oxymoron
    Participant

    US hegemony really began with the massive boon of Oil substituting vast amounts of human labour, which began to wane from the 70’s.
    The third world took up a little of the slack with the admixture of a portion of slave-labour when neoliberalism (Greenspan and crew) let loose the economic hitmen and other financial shenanigans.
    China, with less oil and tighter margins then America of the last mid-century used dirtier fossil fuels and a shit tonne more slave-labour to gain prominence.
    Russia, now are providing the Oil/Gas etc to help China push across the line toward a new hegemony which I fear will have a higher mix of slave-labour.

    Does this seem correct? I feel that human beings are gunna just be more of a bag of grunt-meat over the mid term.
    I welcome corrections or criticism of this view.

    #125083
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    “I feel that human beings are gunna just be more of a bag of grunt-meat over the mid term.”

    Yep – same as it ever was, until the Industrial Revolution really got going of course. Back to the farms and mines we go, shovel in hand. Our brief fossil-fuelled vacation in comfortable indoors workplaces is at an end.

    #125084
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “California Snowpack Is Highest in 40 Years: Officials”

    Good news: therefore never reported. We only report HALF the scientific data, we only pay for HALF to be studied. Discarding half your data sets: that’s Science™!

    “There is so much talk about McCarthy and the House Speaker contest, you’d almost think they’re trying to hide something behind it. I’ll leave that alone for now.”

    Yes: that they are third in line for the Presidency. Anyone want President “Swamp” McCarthy? And if – as rumored – the Supreme Court removes 200 members of Congress and Residents Joe and Harris?

    In the other strategy, why bother? There apparently are only 20 members in the whole Congress with a conscience, so all they have to do is tie up the vote until Jan 7. Which has no downside as it is HILARIOUS, as these kneepad RINOs STILL haven’t learned they are NOT IN CHARGE. They are not going to get business as usual™. It’s over. So make the tiiiiiiiniest bit of change, but they won’t.

    “McCarthy is losing it.

    He texted one of my colleagues who didn’t vote for him:

    “I am ready to fund an endless war”

    I’m assuming this is in *addition* to Ukraine.” — Matt Gaetz

    And the Trumpster says to get behind him after McCarthy said Trump should be arrested for Jan 6. That’s not some I-thought-the-letter-agencies-would-get-him-and-CYA back in Jan 2017, that was essentially yesterday, AND totally obvious was a fabrication. McCarthy is for transparent fabrications to arrest legitimate Presidents. And Trump is in favor of that too, I guess.

    (No, Trump knows what the path is right now, and is playing the part of being EXTREMELY conciliatory, moderate, and non-self-promotional. And tell me: when have you ever seen that from him before?)

    What else? Trumper are in a cult. A cult where their Great Leader says get vaxxed and the followers say “no way” and he tells them to vote McCarthy, and they say “No way” along with virtually everything else Cheeto says. The cult of those who don’t obey anyone? Who follow their consciences on the evidence? Some cult.

    Public Cardiac deaths among the healthiest athletes rises 20x one day after the vaccine is released, and I have a Scientific answer: It’s a Coincidence! See? All solved. “I have no data that supports that” because I will never, ever look. Like the elections. Somehow I know ahead of time which data I SHOULD take seriously and look at completely, and which data I should refuse and look at only half of. Funny how I can know that ahead of time.

    “Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche: Thankfully, he continues to be wrong. I can’t say that’s infinite under these conditions, though.

    Headlines: I particularly like MSNBC’s (We’re Not News Network™) take on it. Yes, NBC, hearts always stop at the age of 24 because they’re just perfectly healthy. That’s what “healthy” means.

    ““This is 9/11 on steroids”

    That’s a bit ominous. The world’s most obvious scam is still running 21 years and 6 million dead people later. If I bring it up, the victims will still support it with their deaths(by joining the Army). Yes, this same weird thing I don’t seem to have is certainly happening, but it doesn’t seem to be going the same way. Perhaps the relentless, expensive effort to wake people up has made it only half as bad. But maybe because twice as many people are killed and it’s twice as obvious.

    “The Russian statements stressed that US-made Himars missiles were used in the attack.”

    Remember Russia considers the location as “Russia”. That is, the U.S., using U.S.-made and only U.S.-controlled (because of training and logistics) HIMARS, drove up to the border of Russia, and started shooting inside. Just ‘cause. Or in modern terms, THE U.S. HAS INVADED RUSSIA.

    Now again, they’re not fools and know the active war zone is different than driving up to and shooting St. Petersburg, but not by much.

    The U.S. and Anglos, being the most pin-headed, trust-fund, richie-rich tattle-tell bullies in the history of the earth are trying to do their usual: go up to some rando in grammar school and antagonize him until he takes a swing. Then fall on the ground like Carlos Kaiser and scream “Teacher! He punched me for NO REASON! Boohoohoohoohoo Whaaaaaahhh!”

    This is the specialty and only means of war for these lying, cheating, evil, despicable ‘humans’. Why? Didn’t they do the same thing through all the Indian wars? “I stole all that Cheyanne’s horses, and when he came to my house to get them back IT WERE A MASSACRE! Indians rising all over the west! No womanfolk R safe! Send out Custer’s army to shoot them little chillin’ s in their tents, or if they dare DANCE in public relgiously. I want every old crippled man, every worn-out woman, every child shot in public as NITS MAKE LICE.” That’s the Anglo way, and it’s worked for 500 years. Cry, whine, complain, fall down on the football pitch, claim to be injured. VICTIMS, one and all.

    So you don’t approve of it on the American West, but we approve of the same tactics and open genocide now? GTFO.

    Okay, why stretch out this horrible point that makes me and everyone I know look bad, like the immoral, lying, thieving, conniving, undeserving pinheads we are? Because the U.S. is now sending Bradley APCs to Ukraine. As France is sending the same wheeled heavy tanks. (probably. Unless stopped.)

    We are in a slow escalation. And because it’s slow, and Americans are ignorant, selfish pinheads, regardless of when Russia takes a swing to STOP US FROM SENDING CONSTANT MISSILES INTO THEIR COUNTRY, the U.S. will claim to be a victim of that “Unprovoked” “Aggression”. You know: because shooting missiles into a nuclear airbase isn’t “provocation”. By which we just HAVE to exchange Christmas-card Nukes worldwide, you know brother! Just because! Because let’s you and him fight! McCarthy is ON the case! He is all-in for unlimited, endless, escalation of war! Yeah!!!

    “U.S. Forces in Europe Prepare for War with Russia (Celente)”

    That’s funny: we don’t have any men or equipment in theatre. What are we going to do? Accuse them to death? The combined U.S. forces are a speed bump. That is by design, so if Russia takes out this annoying speed bump, as the Anglos like the Maine, the Lusitania, and FDR intentionally arranged in Pearl Harbor, we kill all those thousands of innocents totally on purpose, we can then fully mobilize and kill MORE innocents on purpose. Because we’re the victims who never done nuffin’ don’t you know?

    Now why would Russia think we’re aggressive just ‘cause we attacked 20 countries in the last 20 years, killed 6 million people, and toppled 100 elected governments? That’s just overreacting!

    Fair’s fair: One of the 20 nations we attacked was our own. And they’re attacking it again this morning. I expect to be shot at twice before noon in the economic/social sense.

    “The EU’s sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict have been a complete failure, Belgian member of the European Parliament Guy Verhofstadt said on Monday.”

    The answer as of last week? Let’s do MOAR! Again: they want to draw Russia to take more, be dramatic, cross lines, so they can sell a full mobilization and complete and final loss of human rights here in the West. Plus a billion deaths! Don’t forget the yummy deaths!

    It takes Pierre de Gaule to tell the truth in France? Nope: still not. This was reported by RT. Like the 690 cars burned in near-constant protests, French media will never report the truth. Never.

    “even in this case Ukrainian air defense stocks were being exhausted.”

    Ukraine is out of missiles. And this same article just said Russia isn’t, as that’s what those “Drones” are. “Drone” in this context = “Guided Missile”. They should probably change the name in the article and in common parlance.

    “December marked “the birth of the petroyuan,” he said”

    They see the last thing. They fight the last war. What is going to happen is NEW, different, not old. It’s not a PetroYuan if it isn’t the reserve currency. It’s just atomizing, one of thousands, indefensible. They don’t need to replace the US$, and in fact shouldn’t – it’s a trap. All they need to do is deny the US the PetroDollar. And Saudi Arabia did that already last year. Maybe we shouldn’t have tried to kill them in Vegas and cover it up as a rando mass shooting. But that’s the CIA: incompetent at all times.

    “emails quickly appeared, asking if action had yet been taken, and if not, why…”

    Oh, why? Why, you random letter-to-the-editor, having no legal basis whatsoever, as even the question is a violation of the 1st Amendment? Why? GFY, that’s why. We’re a private company and do whatever we want. Sec 230 says we are expressly a platform and have no latitude to remove ANY user content that isn’t openly criminal.

    …And that’s why you don’t get started. In two weeks, the “requests” never stop, use up all your time, attention, and resources, and you go broke in a broke-spiral. Sue the pants off them at step one or you’ll never see the end.

    “”RUSSIA became a pretext for…censorship in this country.”

    Yes, because back to 2016 HRC promised the world she would start WWIII in Syria against Russia. So they had already arranged for a war with Russia. That is, if WE arranged it, then clearly Russia didn’t start it. BTW “They hate us for our freedoms”.

    “Schiff Asked Twitter to Censor Paul Sperry over Impeachment Whistleblower (BB)”

    So when do we get a whistleblower for Schiff and Standard Hotel?

    “Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads (Taibbi)…and added links…and included a brief glossary of terms”

    That is, there was so much illegality, every day, from every breathing member of government, we can’t even keep track of it all. We need a searchable database and a score card to even follow the highlights of the endless crime wave from sea to shining sea the U.S. has become. Even our top reporters can barely cover it all.

    Arrests? Crickets.

    Shouldn’t some of this come under the purview of the Supreme Court? We’ll see.

    #125086
    Germ
    Participant

    The Telegraph is the UK Tory rag of record.

    Novak Djokovic locked out of Indian Wells and Miami Open after US extends Covid rules

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tennis/2023/01/04/novak-djokovic-locked-indian-wells-miami-open-us-extends-covid/

    Read the comments section – they all know!

    TVASF

    #125087
    Red
    Participant

    @ oxy: Hard to argue against that. I would add that the Chinese model of government is what the upper management of the west is ogling/lusting after. Everything disadvantageous to the general publics freedom of movement is what seems to be applied recently with extreme prejudice. The social credit system that has been in operation in China since b.c.(before covid) seems to be the goal. The now old joke: reporter to chinese citizen: What do you think of the social credit system? reply: Well I can’t complain.

    #125088
    John Day
    Participant

    That is a very nice Japanese woodblock print, Ilargi. Subtle and profound.

    #125089
    John Day
    Participant

    Dr.D asked: “So when do we get a whistleblower for Schiff and Standard Hotel?”
    They reside with the JFK assassination witnesses, I think…

    #125090
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #125091
    John Day
    Participant

    @Germ:
    I’m sorry Tessa died. God bless all the well-meaning and dutiful people who are going through these serial bereavements.
    I hope that they can see that they have been terribly betrayed, change their views of “the system” and rebuild their lives from this unjust devastation.
    I fear and expect that the deaths have not yet peaked, but I can’t know the future curve of that.

    #125092
    Oroboros
    Participant
    #125093
    Oroboros
    Participant
    #125094
    John Day
    Participant

    The LA Times and Washington Post “protest too much”, huh?
    Go for it, Liars!

    #125095
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #125096
    John Day
    Participant

    Oxymoron wrote:
    “Does this seem correct? I feel that human beings are gunna just be more of a bag of grunt-meat over the mid term.
    I welcome corrections or criticism of this view.”

    No, no, no, no, You’re wrong. It’s gonna be GOOD, I sez, GOOD!

    #125097
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #125098
    Germ
    Participant

    Great comments in response to an article slamming a brave Member of Parliament speaking up against the death vaxx.

    Do go read the comments – lots of death-vaxx injured!

    Now prestigious medical journal slams Tory MP Andrew Bridgen for peddling ‘misleading’ claims about Covid vaccines being ‘harmful’ to kids

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11595547/Prestigious-medical-journal-slams-Tory-MP-Andrew-Bridgen-peddling-misleading-Covid-jab-claims.html

    People are waking up to the global crime.

    TVASF

    #125099
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    Could have been worse – at least it wasn’t the Pilot. I guess it’s only a matter of time before that happens.

    “A passenger died on board a flight which diverted to Shannon Airport in the early hours of this morning
    KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight 714 was travelling from Paramaribo in Suriname on the north eastern coast of South America, to Amsterdam in The Netherlands at the time……Two doctors travelling on the flight are believed to have rendered assistance however the man, believed to be in his late 50s, subsequently passed away…..A Garda [Police] spokesman confirmed that members attended the airport this morning after receiving a report of a ‘sudden death’ on board a flight.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-ie/travel/news/a-passenger-has-died-on-board-a-flight-diverted-to-shannon-airport-in-the-early-hours-of-the-morning-klm-royal-dutch-airlines-flight-was-travelling-to-amsterdam/ar-AA15XzYh?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=1880437e52ed43a595a11e2b122c4f8d

    #125100
    oldandtired
    Participant

    The drones that Russia uses are priced at around $20,000 per unit, while a surface-to-air missile from Ukraine’s arsenal ranges from $140,000 for a Soviet-era S-300 to $500,000 for a US-supplied NASAM system, he said.

    Russia pays $20,000 per drone. Ukraine pays nothing for $500,000 US supplied missile. There, fixed it for you.

    #125101
    kultsommer
    Participant

    From post-vacc treatment protocol article:
    “…a particular intervention may be life-saving for one patient and completely ineffective for another”.
    While I am more a proponent that batches of different potency are distributed, does that explain why some jabbed had a violent or deadly reaction and others still function after multiple boosters? On the other hand I amazed that we ere THAT different!?!? Tragedy of a football player (unlike thousands documented and filmed cases of an injury) has a traction to promote awareness – in another words, init’s grim way, celebrities are finally conducting genuine public service.

    Amazing octopus video: For blending with organic background one may say fair enough but I could have sworn (it was a such a magic that I am still “debating” myself) that I’ve seen the video where the majestic creature matched the checker board that was hovering over.

    #125102
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Empire of Lies® supplied missiles are in short supply because it has gutted it’s Military Industrial Mafia production base and has maximized weapons:

    FOR PROFIT not PERFORMANCE

    The ‘Patriot’ (cough,gag,cough) missile defense system cost between $3 and $6 million dollars
    FOR EACH MISSILE

    These boondoggle grift jokes have to be fired in PAIRS to have a change of hitting anything, much less a Russian missile that cost next to nothing.

    And yes,the taxpayer picks up the tab, somewhat.

    But the Empire of Lies® is PRINTING as much ‘money’ (out of it’s ass) each year as it collects in taxes.

    The Reserve Currency RACKET allows this type of accounting fraud to continue propped up by the Petro Dollar, which MBS and the Saudis are actively working in stick a Shiv into and finish off.

    The Middle East is looking East NOT West these days.

    .

    #125103
    Polemos
    Participant

    Dr. D: “Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche: Thankfully, he continues to be wrong. I can’t say that’s infinite under these conditions, though.”

    Wrong in what way?


    Oroboros, thank you for the link to the Rogan/Weinstein piece. It speaks on similar themes I was commenting on earlier this week —namely, technê and bios developing together, and not necessarily as “competition” (I recall one TAE commentor making the correction Noticing regarding how the Matrix trilogy was not about the machine-human war being a narrative where the humans “win” but one where the two recognize their mutual interdependence, their mutual hostility, and their mutual opening to genuine cohabitation and friendship). Interesting how Weinstein ends that segment referring to Nature: the overarching Being within which humans and machines evolve alongside one another and that has its own (unguided) inertia humans will have to make decisions regarding. In this sense, Nature is not just the biotic things that live but also the machines discovering how to replicate machine-culture with machine-economy and machine-ecology. Weinstein is also right to point out that physical books are technology: there is a kind of deception in constraining people’s conceptual thinking about technology, limiting them to thinking about “AI” or electronic computational forms or synthetic automatons, and not a Congress, a mail-and-parcel delivery network, a garden in your backyard, a library of books and artwork in your house, or the underwear intimately caressing you.

    Rogan wants to talk about humans being obsolete, slipping unwittingly into the mode of thinking that evolution is about forms of life getting better. This is part of the mistake. There isn’t a “better” in a universal sense when it comes to life. Zooming far out in all these constant backs-n-forths among commentors (com-mentors: is there a responsibility mentors have with participating alongside one’s audience thinking and remembering?) when it comes to “climate change” and “carbon” and “pollution”, you know the conversation is really about what will live, thrive, and maintain a niche under different and changing conditions. But creating a niche doesn’t mean “better” in the sense of being more durable, more awesome, more capable, more gewgaws: fitness landscapes also have clear places of great fragility, where subtle or small changes cascade into catastrophes. [This is jb-hb’s recent pushback on Afewknowthetruth’s general claims, which Afewknowthetruth chose not to respond to other than to imply jb-hb needs to show respect to the dialogue(‘s participant), something others will note, and already have noted, is one aspect of a pattern Afewknowthetruth engages in just as others will note misses the larger picture where jb-hb is responding (that’s important! it’s a response!) out of frustration with exactly that kind of dismissal.] In one sense, zooming out shows a person that Life is antifragile: it is seeking out more robust landscapes, occasionally indulging in something like a framejump or quantum tunneling where the mainstream/academic explanations cannot explain how forms of life spontaneously coevolve together (since it’s not really allowed to talk about non-linear evolution, or else bilogical history doesn’t make sense as an explanatory narrative), but for the most part seeking stability within a landscape by creating niches through the interrelations of all those living connections, especially when this creating benefits from chaotic or disruptive moments (shaking loose and distributing stored energy).

    Okay, I’ll turn away. I apologize I’m such a parenthetical thinker and writer. Indulgence and lack of editors. It must be exhausting at times to be on the other side, so once again please scroll past this, especially since there’s no images or creative capitalizing. But I appreciate y’all and the diversity, even if some of you do not (want to?) benefit in building up your spiritual/mental immunity through controlled exposure. Maybe it’ll be safer to wear a mask and filter what enters your mind before it gets there? “My censorship protects you, and your censorship protects me.” (Or maybe a deeper fear is: you’ll win, they’ll agree with you, and then whom will you correct against? Seeing the problems with groupthink all around you, you select to inhabit a habitat for competitive views, engaging in struggle for . . .)

    #125104
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Adam Kinzinger (phew, what is that smell?)

    It’s making my eyes tear up!

    Catturd2 bares silent witness to a travesty

    #125105
    zerosum
    Participant

    Politicians are not accountants

    The US will let other countries’ troops do the combat.

    • Effect Of EU Sanctions On Moscow Is ‘Less Than Zero’ – Verhofstadt (RT)

    “..using a missile against a UAV costs up to seven times more than the drone itself..”
    “costs far less to shoot down a drone than to repair a damaged or destroyed power station.”
    ( surface-to-air missile from Ukraine’s arsenal will come down and cause damages)

    • US Makes Europeans Suffer – De Gaulle’s Grandson (RT)

    ————-
    For those few people who cares
    • Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads (Taibbi)
    ———-
    Protocol to get rid of vaxx.

    • Post-vaccine Treatment Protocol (FLCCC)

    https://covid19criticalcare.com/treatment-protocols/i-recover/

    Treatment Protocols
    I-PREVENT: COVID, Flu and RSV Protection Protocol
    I-CARE: Early COVID Treatment
    I-CARE: RSV and Flu Treatment
    MATH+ COVID Hospital Treatment
    I-RECOVER: Long COVID Treatment
    I-RECOVER: Post-Vaccine Treatment
    Nutritional Therapeutics and COVID-19
    Vitamins and Nutraceuticals During Pregnancy
    Totality of Evidence

    Patients with post-vaccine syndrome must not receive further COVID-19 vaccines of any type. Likewise, patients with long COVID should avoid all COVID vaccinations.

    This protocol is solely for educational purposes regarding potentially beneficial therapies for COVID-19.
    ————
    …. if Russia do not respond
    shooting missiles into a nuclear airbase isn’t “provocation”.
    ————
    The whole truth
    Russia pays $20,000 per drone. Ukraine pays nothing for $500,000 US supplied missile. (from inventory. Money goes into US mfg for new missile)
    ——–

    #125106
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Russian deployment of salvos of Hypersonic on their deployed frigates changes naval warfare as dramatically as the aircraft carrier killed off the battleship.

    One salvo from these relatively low cost platforms will sink an entire Empire of Lies Carrier Task Force.

    These Hypersonic missile have no defense and cannot be stopped with any system the Empire of Lies possesses or will conceivably possess in the next decade or so.

    They can be fired from a standoff distance far outside of carrier aircraft.

    The Age of the Carrier is over, just like it killed the Age of the Battleship.

    Russia launches 7,000mph Zircon Hypersonic nuke missile

    #125107
    zerosum
    Participant

    Requires verification: a ceasefire
    “Putin instructed Shoigu to introduce from 12.00 on January 6 to 24.00 on January 7 a ceasefire along the entire line of combat contact between the parties in Ukraine.”
    ———-
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russias-patriarch-kirill-calls-both-sides-implement-truce-orthodox-christmas
    Update (1015ET): Shortly after Erdogan spoke with Putin this morning, the Russian leader has ordered a temporary cease-fire in Ukraine Friday and Saturday to mark Orthodox Christmas.

    #125108
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Newly discovered “Love for Russia” I find amazing, after an observation of decades long spitting hatred?

    Video brought back memories from my days in the army, where my unit was manning Russian made four-ramp rocket launchers – named a “duck system” since a a radar guided heat seeking anti-aircraft missile had a slight sway of it’s back during the travel. During delicate transfer of rockets from the ramp to a monster truck (forgot if Zil or Kraz) and vice-versa, all the command-response-command-response…were conducted in Russian. Those were the days!

    #125109
    Germ
    Participant

    You’ve all seen his brilliant cartoons.
    Enjoy this:

    https://www.bobmoran.co.uk/brilliantly-difficult-film

    TVASF

    #125110
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    @Oroboros #125106 – yes absolutely correct. I’ve thought for some time that US weapons procurement has been busily focussed on fighting the last war, particularly when it comes to Aircraft Carriers. They are nothing but floating (for now) targets in the age of hypersonic missiles. Too risky to put them anywhere near an enemy that does not use Toyota pickups as its primary weapons platform. Just as the British Navy once continued to build Battleships (because that was what had worked before) long after submarines made them redundant from a combat perspective so the US is falling into the same trap.

    As for the shiny new ‘Stealth Bomber’ – also a redundant boondoggle. Just an opportunity for a competent enemy to down a $750m asset for the cost of a $1m missile. Who in hell needs a bomber to deliver a payload in this day and age when a missile will do the same thing for 1% of the cost?

    #125111
    Red
    Participant

    “I and the vast majority of my colleagues think we’ve had it,” Barnosky’s Stanford colleague Paul Ehrlich, who also appeared on the show, told Pelley, “that the next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.”

    “I would say it is too much to say that we’re killing the planet, because the planet’s gonna be fine,” said Barnosky. “What we’re doing is we’re killing our way of life.”

    https://futurism.com/stanford-scientists-civilization-crumble

    #125112
    Red
    Participant

    Be careful what you wish for you may just get it!

    “Even though California is experiencing one of the worst droughts on record, the barrage of atmospheric rivers could alleviate some of the drought stress. ”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/pineapple-express-bomb-cyclone-wallop-california

    #125113
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Admiral Grigorovich-class missile frigate $450-500 million (with Hypersonic missiles)

    USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier cost $13.3 billion for the Navy to build (with 75 aircraft)

    This

    .

    can SINK this

    .

    at a THIRTY to ONE cost deferential

    And because the naval version of the dreaded F-35 Lardbucket costs almost one billion PER plane.

    Let’s see:

    75 F-35s X $1 billion

    Oh, another 75 billion in Aircraft is gone with the sinking of the carrier with a hypersonic salvo.

    Gosh, those numbers do add up quickly

    Quick, call Chooch to double check!

    #125114
    DarkMatter
    Participant

    With no speaker of the House the next in line for President is Patty Murray, President pro tempore of the Senate. This might be a good time for the Democrats to remove Biden and get Harris to resign.

    #125115
    Red
    Participant

    More than one economist, big wig CEO, and Fed watcher has alleged the problems haunting the financial system have very deep roots. These people often contend governments and central banks have not fully rectified the problems causing the great financial crisis of 2008. Instead, they have merely papered over our failures by printing money and flooding the system with liquidity.

    Let’s just cut to the chase. Overall, the global financial system is not a well-designed efficient machine. Instead, it is a cobbled-together mess all glued together in a haphazard way to get the job done. To make matters worse, this system is greased by the greed of those who benefit from stealing a little from here and there. In the real world, things are usually not intentionally designed to be complicated but the reality is that they just are.

    This means that more often than we would like to admit, systems thrown together with various parts or pieced together haphazardly are prone to be unreliable. When we try to explain events in terms of cause and effect the bigger picture has a way of getting lost. Often hidden away is the risk that results when complex poorly built systems become codependent upon other poorly built systems. Bestselling author Nassim Taleb who wrote, “The Black Swan” detailed in his book how when something is highly complicated highly improbable and unpredictable events can and do occur.

    https://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-global-financial-system-is-rube.html?lr=1

    #125116
    Red
    Participant

    The video mentioned in my last post, good fun really:

    #125117
    Red
    Participant

    That twitless thingy:

    🔥 The San Francisco Standard ran a quiet mini-Twitter files story last month, headlined “These Doctors Pushed Masking, Covid Lockdowns on Twitter. Turns Out, They Don’t Exist.” Can you believe that? To give you an idea where this curious leftwing media story was going, later in the article they speculated that the fake doctor accounts were designed to make the left look crazy for cocoa puffs.

    As always these days, it wasn’t corporate media’s crack squad of highly motivated investigative reporters who broke the story. It began with — of course — an independent researcher, an LGBT+ ally of some kind, who came across a trans pro-lockdown doctor who has been very vocal during the pandemic and has BOTH a trans flag and a Ukraine flag in his bio picture.

    https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/fakers-thursday-january-5-2023-c

    #125118
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Vanguard Splits From BlackRock Over Major Climate Alliance as the Backlash to ESG Builds

    ESG is an acronym for Environmental, Social, and Governance.

    Vanguard, one of the 800ib gorillas in the Investment Mafia has split from BlackRock over the Major Climate Alliance in a backlash to ESG.

    Vanguard, has essentially told the Environment Mafia that the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM), an alliance of asset managers committed to supporting net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 can, wait for it:

    Blow It Out Their Ass

    BIOTA

    Net Zero Asset Managers initiative (NZAM) is a LOSER idea for investment returns and that they, Vanguard, risk getting sued until they bleed from their Ears & Ass by their shareholder for not taking a maximum return investment strategy, which is NOT NZAM.

    And NZAM is definitely not a maximum return path.

    Greta is weeping as we speak.

    .

    #125120
    John Day
    Participant
    #125121
    John Day
    Participant

    I’ll point out that the guided missile cruisers are, themselves vulnerable to submarine attack. The US has many submarines that are attack subs, not nuclear-missile carriers.
    There will be the biggest, most sudden wealth-destruction ever when this starts, never to be rebuilt, it seems.

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