Feb 082023
 
 February 8, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Johannes Vermeer The glass of wine c 1658-1660

 

China Wants its Balloon Back (Celente)
Let’s Talk About Nuclear War (Naveira)
Musk Assesses Public Awareness Of WWIII Risk (RT)
Kiev Inching Closer To Conceding Defeat – Medvedev (RT)
Kiev Still Conducts Terror Attacks Against New Russian Regions – Shoigu (TASS)
Anglo-Zionism and the Confederation of Europe (Batiushka)
China Sees Russia’s Concerns Over NATO Expansion As Premise For Conflict (TASS)
West Uses OPCW To Justify Its Aggression – Moscow (RT)
EU ‘Sold Its Soul’ To Russia – Poland (RT)
EU’s Borrell Can’t Hide His Racist Worldview – Lavrov (RT)
Ukraine: There’s No Substitute For Victory (Steve Forbes)
US Rep. Matt Gaetz Calls For End To Funding Of Kiev’s Army (RT)
Russia Has Lost Confidence In US Dollar – Finance Minister (RT)
US Lacks Unity Before Modern Challenges – Kissinger (TASS)
Where Do Things Stand? (Jim Kunstler)
The Failure of Scientific Journals: the Failure of Science (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

Trump SOTU

 

 

2014

 

 

Tucker SOTU

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They’ve “rescued” it, so let’s hear if it’s just a weather balloon.

China Wants its Balloon Back (Celente)

China’s Foreign Ministry called on the U.S. to immediately return the “airship” that was shot out of the skies last weekend by an F-22 after Washington identified it as a “spy balloon.” Mao Ning, a spokeswoman from the ministry, said during a press briefing Tuesday that the balloon does not belong to the U.S., it belongs to China, according to RT, the Russian outlet. She accused Washington of overreacting and acting in an unprofessional manner with the goal of smearing Beijing. China has insisted that the balloon was a civilian meteorological research airship. Tensions between China and the U.S. are hitting new lows. Wei Fenghe, the Chinese military head, refused a call with Lloyd Austin, the U.S. military chief, on Tuesday.

[..] American F-22 fighters successfully shot down a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast last weekend that the U.S. said was being used by Beijing to “surveil strategic sites.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called the incursion an “unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.” The Defense Department said it began tracking the balloon, which was carrying a payload the size of three buses, over the Aleutian Islands on 28 January. The balloon floated over Alaska, Canada, and then re-entered U.S. airspace over Idaho, a statement read. The U.S. claimed it did not shoot down the balloon over land to prevent “undue risk” to civilians. President Joe Biden said Saturday that he ordered the Pentagon to shoot the balloon down “as soon as possible” on Wednesday. The balloon was eventually picked off by the Raptor which fired one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile that cost We the People of Slavelandia about $400,000.


The statement said, “F-15 Eagles flying from Barnes Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts, supported the F-22.” “Long before the shoot down, U.S. officials took steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information, mitigating its intelligence value to the Chinese,” the statement read. China said the U.S. overreacted over a weather balloon. “China strongly disapproves of and protests against the U.S. attack on a civilian unmanned airship by force,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday morning, according to the South China Morning Post. “The U.S.’s use of force is a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice,” the ministry said, before noting that Beijing reserves the right to make “further responses that are necessary.”

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“..there is no compromise, a country is either sovereign or a colony..”

Let’s Talk About Nuclear War (Naveira)

The United States and Russia – the two greatest nuclear powers on the planet – have embarked on a wide-ranging “indirect war”. All that now remains is for them to engage in direct warfare, which will end up happening sooner or later. If later, it will be exactly because both powers are aware that any direct war between them will inevitably escalate into nuclear war, with a good chance of devastating them both. How we reached this point will not be examined in depth here. Very briefly, both parties regard this as a struggle for existence – Russia, in order to continue to exist as a nation (in Putin’s words, “there is no compromise, a country is either sovereign or a colony”), and the United States, to continue to exist as the nation with hegemony over the rest (the US economy has become so reliant on that hegemony that its end would entail the country’s collapse).

Accordingly, both are willing to take the conflict to its ultimate consequences in order to prevail, and thus nuclear war becomes more inevitable with every passing day. Among those responsible for a nuclear war that will be the downfall of all Humankind, there can be no “good guy”. However, when one side is fighting to subsist with autonomy, while the other is fighting in order to dominate the rest, it is not difficult to discern which is most the “bad guy”. Also, if it is still possible, after the hecatomb, to bring the culprits to some kind of justice, it will make all the difference to distinguish who “pressed the button” first (that is, who deliberately chose for millions of people to die) from whoever operated their buttons in retaliation to the incoming attack.

What developments will take place until we finally arrive at nuclear war is also not the purpose of this piece. Once again, to summarise, both are trying to “gain time”, hoping for their adversary to fall over their own feet before direct war ensues: the Russians are counting on an economic and social collapse in the West, while the US counts on a military defeat of the Russians by the Ukrainians, resulting in the fall of the Putin government. It has to be said, however, that thus far the Russians are getting the better of this “war of attrition”.

The US also seeks to draw Russia into war against some other, NATO-member country, prodding Lithuania to blockade land access to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, Romania to provide Moldavia with the means to reincorporate the pro-Russian separatist region of Transnistria, and Poland to occupy the westernmost portion of the Ukraine, so as to force Russia to respond militarily. Under the fifth article of the treaty that set up NATO, an attack on any member state is to be taken as an attack on them all; in that way, the United States would drag all of Europe into a war against Russia. The Russians (as well as these European cannon-fodder candidates) have thus far managed to sidestep this trap.

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“Most are oblivious to the danger.”

Musk Assesses Public Awareness Of WWIII Risk (RT)

The majority of people are not even aware that a new world war may erupt soon, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has stated. The risk of a global catastrophe was highlighted this week by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The UN head said in a speech to the General Assembly on Monday that he feared that humanity was marching toward a “wider war” with its “eyes wide open” and urged preserving peace. “Could we please not do WWIII,” pleaded conservative political commentator Luke Rudkowski, reacting to the speech. Musk responded: “Most are oblivious to the danger.” The Twitter and SpaceX CEO previously warned against “relentless escalation” of the conflict in Ukraine, stating that it was dangerous for the country itself and the world.


Musk won praise for supplying SpaceX Starlink satellite internet systems to the Ukrainian government, with some experts assessing that they were a game-changer in the fight against Russia. But he also suggested that Kiev would have to make concessions to Moscow in order to achieve peace, a notion that prompted some Ukrainian officials to harshly criticize and even insult the businessman. Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, claimed last week that Musk was using his control of Twitter to reduce the reach of Ukrainian official accounts and help “Russian propaganda.” “Maybe a regulator is needed to explain competition rules to the owner?” Podoliak mused. The Ukrainian official offered no evidence to support his claims or explanation of how his regulatory threat could be carried out.

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“..Aleksey Danilov, who claimed that Russia is lobbying EU nations to accept a Korean-style split of his nation..”

Kiev Inching Closer To Conceding Defeat – Medvedev (RT)

Discussions of a “Korean scenario” in Ukraine are a sign that Kiev is on the way to recognizing the reality on the ground and accepting its losses, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said. The idea of a Korean-style division of Ukraine has been discussed by current and former officials in Kiev, who claim that this is what Russia is pursuing. The idea that Ukraine could be divided up the way Korea was after the war in the 1950s is “for domestic consumption” and constitutes “wishful thinking,” Medvedev added, citing unnamed “propagandists” as peddling the notion. What is notable is that “they coyly tested the statement that there can be no victory” and that “being split is the best-case scenario,” the former president said. The ‘Korean scenario’ means that a smaller, US-backed Ukraine could eventually develop to the level of South Korea while maintaining its claims over lost territories, Medvedev explained.

“In essence, this is the first step towards accepting the realities on the ground,” he said. Korea was split into two parts after a three-year civil war, in which the opposing factions in the north and south were backed by the USSR and China, and the US respectively. Both Pyongyang and Seoul claim sovereignty over the entire Korean Peninsula, and each considers the other government to be unlawful. Unlike South Korea, Donbass voted in a referendum to become part of Russia rather than forming a sovereign state, Medvedev said, arguing that a ‘Korean scenario’ is not feasible for Ukraine. The former president currently serves as the deputy chairman of the Russian National Security Council.

The idea was floated to the Ukrainian public last month by Medvedev’s counterpart in Kiev, Aleksey Danilov, who claimed that Russia is lobbying EU nations to accept a Korean-style split of his nation, and stated that Kiev would reject it. The Kremlin dismissed the report as a “hoax. This week, the Korean scenario was also brought up by Aleksey Arestovich, the former aide to the office of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Speaking at an expert panel discussion on Monday, he stated that Ukraine does not have enough manpower to beat Russia on the battlefield anytime soon, and claimed that a Korean scenario may become an acceptable off-ramp for the parties involved. Like Danilov before him, Arestovich claimed that Russia is seeking this type of outcome, while noting that the Western nations which Kiev depends upon “think the same way.”

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“..Ukraine’s armed forces have been attacking residential areas, hospitals, and public gathering areas..”

Kiev Still Conducts Terror Attacks Against New Russian Regions – Shoigu (TASS)

Authorities in Ukraine continue intimidating civilians in Russia’s new regions, with Ukrainian troops attacking residential areas and hospitals there, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Tuesday. “While realizing that they won’t be able to inflict a military defeat on Russia, the Ukrainian leadership has been resorting to criminal activity in order to intimidate residents of new Russian regions,” Shoigu said, adding that Ukraine’s armed forces have been attacking residential areas, hospitals, and public gathering areas and committing terror attacks against government and social facilities. On January 28, Russia’s top brass said that the Ukrainian armed forces had launched an intentional attack at around 7:30 am, using rocket-propelled projectiles from the US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, on a hospital in Novoaidar in the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR).


Fourteen patients and medical employees were killed, while 24 more suffered wounds. The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that civilian and military health professionals had been providing medical treatment to local civilians and service members at the Novoaidar hospital for many months. Former LPR’s ambassador to Moscow Rodion Miroshnik said last week that Ukrainian forces had shelled four LPR hospitals since the start of the year. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said it’s going to look into the circumstances behind the Novoaidar hospital shelling.

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Orthodox priest Batiushka sees the GOP as the Anglos, and the Dems as the zionists.

Anglo-Zionism and the Confederation of Europe (Batiushka)

[..] the main bastion of Anglo-Zionism is undoubtedly the USA, which the bankers from London seriously colonised during the First World War. specifically during the 1916 turning-point, when it became apparent to the Round Table organisation there would only be one winner, neither Germany, nor Great Britain, but the USA. As soon as Russia had been taken out of the equation through US bankers via their British agents and Russian traitors in Petrograd in early 1917, the first US troops appeared in France less than one month later. All had been pre-planned. Today in the US, the Republican Party represents the Anglos and the Democratic Party the Zionists. The billionaire Trump, like Bush, is a typical White Anglo nationalist WASP: America first.

On the other hand, Biden is a typical Zionist, just like Obama and Clinton before him, though quite unlike Kennedy. An electoral accident, he of course had to be eliminated. And he was.For 250 years the Anglos and the Zionists have worked together in the US, they have had the same self-interested interests – money and power. However, there are now discussions between them regarding the Ukraine. Already half of the Anglo Republicans want out of the Ukraine (1). It is too costly and they want to save the US (and their own fortunes) from its multiple self-inflicted wounds just in case it goes under. But the Zionists are thinking along the same lines. There is only one solution. The Anglos wanted the Ukraine in order to defeat their traditional rival, Russia.

However, for the Zionists the Ukraine had another purpose, it was to destroy White Europe, the same purpose they had in fomenting the First and Second World Wars, so ensuring Zionist domination of the world – ‘Globalism’. Not all neocons are Wolfowitzes, Kagans and Nulands. Many are Anglos. Today, we are already seeing that the Republicans are increasingly beginning to support Zaluzhny, the Kiev military commander, whereas the Democrats still stand behind the Jewish Zelensky, but are now wavering. The Republicans originally wanted to weaken Russia. The Republicans are nationalists, so are the Russians. It is now just dawning on them that Russia does not want to recreate the Soviet Empire or any other sort of Empire, all they want is to protect Russians, not to invade other countries. In any case, they are not going to weaken Russia any more through the Ukraine.

All that they have done so far is to strengthen Russia. The Ukraine has not served its purpose. As for the Zionists, they are happy to kill as many White Europeans, especially Russian and Ukrainians, as possible, but above all they want world power. The interests of Anglos and Zionists coincide. For if the Russians do not want world power after all, then the real rival is China, which has real mercantile power. Therefore, the pivot to China, where there is real money. Once the US has lost in the Ukraine, and Kadyrov confidently predicts that it will be over by the end of 2023, the US will turn its attention to China. But it is already happening. That is what the balloon show was all about. China is a much more interesting option for the money-grubbers, whether Anglos or Zionists. But where does that leave benighted Europe?

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“You believe that the NATO expansion does not carry a threat for Russia, but, when [Soviet leader Nikita] Khruschev decided to deploy nuclear weapons on Cuba, what was [US President John] Kennedy’s reaction?”

China Sees Russia’s Concerns Over NATO Expansion As Premise For Conflict (TASS)

China remains neutral in regards to the conflict in Ukraine, but it understands Russia’s concerns over NATO’s eastward expansion and the plans to include Ukraine in the alliance, which have become the premise for the current conflict, Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye said on the LCI TV channel Monday. “NATO has been posing a threat to Russia’s security for decades, […] the five rounds of NATO’s eastward expansion pose a significant threat for Russia’s security. This is what [Russian] President Vladimir Putin is talking about; he strongly opposes the inclusion of a number of neighboring states to NATO, including Ukraine,” Lu Shaye said, answering a question about the reasons behind the current conflict in Ukraine.

“You believe that the NATO expansion does not carry a threat for Russia, but, when [Soviet leader Nikita] Khruschev decided to deploy nuclear weapons on Cuba, what was [US President John] Kennedy’s reaction?” he continued. When the host noted that, prior to the special military operation, there allegedly were no plans to include Ukraine to the alliance and to deploy NATO missiles on its territory, the diplomat noted that this could happen in the future. “If NATO pushes its borders to Russia’s threshold, it will also deploy missiles,” he noted. The Chinese envoy opined that the actions of the West do not contribute to a prompt end of the Ukrainian conflict.

“China remains neutral in this crisis, but we believe that constant shipments of increasingly heavy weapons to one side of the conflict do not contribute to its prompt end. It is like pouring oil to the flame,” he said. Answering corresponding allegations from the host, the diplomat assured that Beijing does not ship weapons to Russia and “does nothing against peaceful settlement of the conflict.” “Several months ago, European countries refused to ship tanks to Ukraine, and now they do. Today, they refuse to ship warplanes, but, maybe, in several months, they will ship them,” he noted. “Maybe, one day, NATO member states will wonder if they are a side to the conflict.”.

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It’s insane that the OPCW still exists. On par with Bellingcat.

West Uses OPCW To Justify Its Aggression – Moscow (RT)

The latest report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which blames Damascus for carrying out a chemical attack in Douma in 2018, looks like a political hit piece meant to justify the West’s continued military aggression against the Syrian government, says Alexander Shulgin, Russia’s permanent representative to the organization. Speaking to RT, Shulgin vehemently dismissed the report, which was released in late January by the so-called Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). Calling the IIT “completely illegitimate,” he claimed the group’s creation was pushed through by the US and its allies in order to undermine the core principles of the OPCW and international law and replace them with their own “made-up rules.”

The IIT’s report, according to Shulgin, is riddled with inconsistencies and factual gaps, and barely holds together. Furthermore, none of Russia’s or any other country’s “uncomfortable” questions regarding the details of the IIT’s findings were even remotely addressed during an OPCW briefing on the report, the ambassador claimed. Shulgin also noted that the report highlighted the double standards currently present within the OPCW. When Russia presented evidence of a chemical attack in Aleppo back in 2016, every minute detail of Moscow’s findings was heavily scrutinized by the organization, he said. However, when it comes to the attack in Douma, OPCW officials seem to turn a blind eye to basic questions such as how and when the evidence was gathered and presented during the investigation.

“For instance, they referred to the fact that some new sample has appeared, provided by a third party. What is this third party? Nothing is said about it. They just say ‘trust us’,” said Shulgin, noting that the sample in question had never been reported on in previous investigations. “So before, there was no sample, but now, suddenly, it has somehow appeared. Without any explanations,” the ambassador stressed, suggesting its sudden appearance can only be explained by the need for the US, France, and UK to escape international accountability for their aggression against Syria.

The three NATO states launched a series of airstrikes against civilian and military targets in Syria in April 2018 after the so-called ‘White Helmets’ – an NGO operating in rebel-controlled areas of Syria – published a series of videos supposedly showing the aftermath of a chlorine attack on the residents of Douma. Syria has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, and both Damascus and Moscow have repeatedly pointed to evidence, including testimonies from alleged victims, that suggests the incident was staged in order to justify a Western attack.

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“..Peskov said in December that the EU was only replacing one “addiction” with another while filling Washington’s coffers with billions of dollars…”

EU ‘Sold Its Soul’ To Russia – Poland (RT)

Europe allowed itself to grow dependent on Russian energy like a drug addict, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Monday. Speaking at a conference in Warsaw on efforts to support Ukraine, Morawiecki suggested that the EU got hooked on Russian natural resources, with Moscow doing its best to enable the addiction. “The dealer always gives the first dose for free or very cheap so that the addict comes for more and agrees to any price,” he said. As a result, the prime minister stated, gas contracts with Russia “turned out to be a pact under which Europe sold its soul.” The continent was “so easily seduced by Russia” not through “demonic abilities,” but rather because of its own weakness, he claimed.

At the same time, Morawiecki said the Ukraine conflict had awakened many countries “from their geopolitical slumber.” As the fighting rages, the West stands at a crossroads: “either the victory of Russia and the defeat of the West, or the renaissance of Western civilization,” he asserted. “Today it is not enough for us to talk about rebuilding Europe, today we have to think about rebuilding Europe so that peace and security become permanent foundations for development for many decades,” Morawiecki stressed. Since the start of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has committed to completely weaning itself off Russian energy by 2030. It intends to double down on the use of green energy and secure oil and gas supplies of non-Russian origin. In particular, the bloc has resorted to importing liquified natural gas (LNG) from the US.

However, in October, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire accused the US of capitalizing on the EU’s economic woes, saying that it sells its LNG “at four times the price that it sets for its own industrialists.” Commenting on the bloc’s push to reduce dependence on Russian energy, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said in December that the EU was only replacing one “addiction” with another while filling Washington’s coffers with billions of dollars.

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“Not so long ago he openly spoke about Europe being a garden surrounded by a jungle that threatens it..”

EU’s Borrell Can’t Hide His Racist Worldview – Lavrov (RT)

Calling African countries easy to manipulate is on brand for Josep Borrell, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, responding to the EU foreign policy chief’s remarks that accused Moscow of “spreading misinformation.” Borrell had addressed EU diplomats earlier in the day, accusing Russia of using “information manipulation and interference” as weapons of war. Noting that Lavrov was visiting Mali and Eritrea, Borrell called them “easy countries” for Moscow to “spread lies about who is guilty for what is happening” in Ukraine. “So speaks a man who can’t hide the racist essence of his worldview,” Lavrov said when asked about his EU counterpart’s accusations. “Not so long ago he openly spoke about Europe being a garden surrounded by a jungle that threatens it, so the garden needs to be careful with the jungle. That says it all about who actually relates to the needs and interests of African countries, and how.”

“We have nothing to hide or to be ashamed of,” the Russian foreign minister added. “We were at the source of Africa’s liberation from the colonial yoke. The Soviet Union was one of the main initiators of the declaration to grant independence to colonized countries and peoples in 1960. And it was not an imitation, as [former UK PM] Boris Johnson recently called the Minsk agreements, but a real historical act that sealed the end of colonial rule.” Speaking to EU diplomats, Borrell lamented that some African countries do not support the bloc’s position that Ukraine is fighting “for the values on which we are basing our understanding of the world.”

In his view, the current conflict is not only being fought on the battlefield with troops, but “in the information space, trying to win the hearts and minds of people.” For that purpose, the EU is “protecting the freedom of expression” by banning Russian media, while providing support to “independent” outlets that Moscow has designated as foreign agents, he added. While accusing Russia of spreading disinformation, Borrell apparently did so himself – by saying Eritrea was among the “easy” countries Lavrov was currently targeting. The Russian diplomat actually visited that country last month, along with Angola, Eswatini and South Africa. His current trip includes stops in Mali, Mauritania and Sudan.

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Well, well, Mr Forbes.

Ukraine: There’s No Substitute For Victory (Steve Forbes)

The disgraceful dithering—especially by Germany—over sending tanks to Ukraine highlights the hesitation and confusion over what’s at stake in this war with Russia. Since the conflict’s beginning, the U.S. and NATO have provided Ukraine with weaponry, but never in sufficient quantity and quality to win. This hesitation has only stiffened Vladimir Putin’s conviction that despite humiliating battlefield setbacks, he can ultimately triumph, and that as time goes by, the West will tire of the effort and pressure Kyiv into a bad deal.


In Putin’s mind, the best way to achieve the subjugation of Ukraine is to use the same approach that Russia used against Nazi Germany in World War II, when the Red Army relied heavily on massive artillery barrages, tank attacks and unrelenting human wave attacks to beat back the Nazi onslaught—which is why Russian casualties were more than ten times those of the U.S. and Britain combined. Putin is playing for keeps. Russia and our other adversaries still see the U.S. as a country in terminal decline and lacking the stamina it exhibited during the Cold War. Therefore, we should be supplying Ukraine with everything it needs to unmistakably defeat Putin. That means not only many more tanks—especially Germany’s Leopard 2s, which are better suited to the terrain than our Abrams tanks—but also fighter aircraft, including F-16s, antitank and advanced antiaircraft weaponry, drones and much else.

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“..foreigners” have come to Washington “to lecture us about spending our constituents’ money on a conflict thousands of miles away..”

US Rep. Matt Gaetz Calls For End To Funding Of Kiev’s Army (RT)

The US must stop sending billions of dollars to bolster Ukraine’s military, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz said during a speech in the House of Representatives on Monday. He slammed President Joe Biden and both parties, saying the conflict in Ukraine is only benefiting military contractors. “Tomorrow [at the State of the Union address] President Biden will tell us how much more we must do for Ukraine,” Gaetz said, adding that the ongoing hostilities are only lining the pockets of America’s military industry. “Defense contractors need there to be a war going on somewhere. Whether the arms end up in the hands of ISIS, the Taliban, the Azov Battalion, or on the black market,” according to Gaetz. Washington’s support of Ukraine with endless weapons will not end the war but just “prolong the killing,” he said.


“Bandits in the Sinaloa mountains hurt more Americans than the [Russian] men in Crimea,” Gaetz said, adding that the benefits of the conflict to normal Americans are “unclear.” He lamented that “foreigners” have come to Washington “to lecture us about spending our constituents’ money on a conflict thousands of miles away” – a reference to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s visit to the US Capitol in December. He accused Biden of doing “everything possible” to provoke a nuclear war with Russia and called on the White House to pursue a solution through diplomacy. Biden promised 31 US-made M1 Abrams tanks for Ukraine in late January, but said that Washington would not send F-16 fighter jets. Gaetz noted that Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the warplane, was ramping up production in anticipation that there could soon be “third party transfers” of the jets to Kiev.

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“..the US dollar, euro, and British pound – the main reserve currencies – had once been considered the top units of account. “The situation has shown that now this [dollar] is a completely unreliable instrument..”

Russia Has Lost Confidence In US Dollar – Finance Minister (RT)

Russia no longer has trust in the US currency because it has become an unreliable financial instrument, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov stated on Monday. He pointed out that the US dollar, euro, and British pound – the main reserve currencies – had once been considered the top units of account. “The situation has shown that now this [dollar] is a completely unreliable instrument … Therefore, we have no confidence in this kind of unit of account. It is lost,” Siluanov told Russia’s Channel One channel. He also pointed out that Russia has been switching to trade in other currencies, particularly “in rubles and, of course, currencies from other friendly countries, such as the yuan.”


Moscow has been steadily pursuing a policy of de-dollarization in foreign trade. In recent years, Russia and some of its trade partners, including India and China, have been ramping up the use of domestic currencies in mutual settlements in an effort to move away from the dollar and euro. Siluanov highlighted that in 2021 a significant part of financial transactions in Russia were carried out in dollars and euros. “About one third of settlements were then carried out in rubles, while now more than half, about 55%, are conducted in rubles and friendly currencies,” he said, adding that this figure will continue to grow. According to the minister, the economic wellbeing of citizens is more important than exchange rates. “We are most concerned about how the economy will develop, how the income of the population will grow, what kind of employment we will have,” he concluded.

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“..Reagan “understood better than anyone how to integrate the elements of power and the elements of conciliation.”

US Lacks Unity Before Modern Challenges – Kissinger (TASS)

The US lacks unity inside the country amid modern challenges, Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said during the event, dedicated to the 112th anniversary of former US President Ronald Reagan. “Today we again suffer from domestic division and international disorder about arguments about who we are and what we stand for. We find it difficult to muster the domestic cohesion necessary to face the challenges ahead of us,” Kissinger said. He named “China’s ambitions” and the situation in the Middle East, where, in his words, there is a risk of “developing the world’s most devastating weapons.” He also mentioned the Ukrainian crisis that “shows no signs of abating,” and touched upon the issue of development of artificial intelligence that “is transforming human consciousness itself.””Each of these present developments requires a combination of strength and conciliation,” Kissinger said, adding that Reagan “understood better than anyone how to integrate the elements of power and the elements of conciliation.”.

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“.. Russia’s war-aim is simple: the elimination of chaos on its border. This rational objective is something that America’s Party of Chaos can’t understand..”

Where Do Things Stand? (Jim Kunstler)

The Right perceives that its opponents have lost their minds, but there is no arguing with people who are literally insane. What must be done is to wrest political power away from them. In the madness of the Left, power is solely a destructive force, and coercion is a form of pleasure-seeking. Unable to control the dynamics in-play, they seek to wreck the dynamics, to induce as much chaos as possible, so as to punish the non-insane. That is exactly what the Green New Deal does. Unable to control the dynamic disruptive changes in the global oil-and-gas industry that our high-tech economies depend on, the Left pretends that there is work-around “Green” energy system that can replace fossil fuels with wind and solar devices that don’t scale up and which require fossil fuels to make and deploy.

It’s slick and grandiosely hypothetical (i.e., wishful thinking), and the net effect of this major crusade will be to hasten the collapse and impoverishment of our society (ergo: the punishment). Keep all this in mind as you watch the Congressional inquiries now just getting underway. Much as they are likely to reveal the insane and arguably criminal machinations of a panicked bureaucracy, and the figures who run it, the Left will remain impervious to any truthful revelations that emerge. Of course, many of these officials are culpable for actions extremely damaging to the people of this land, and the masses on the Left who supported those actions — such as mandatory vaccinations — will be among the most damaged. These True Believers will find it hard to admit that they did it to themselves. So, the hearings upcoming, such as the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, will probably not change the minds of your friends and relatives stuck in the mass formation of Jacobin-Wokery.

But the hearings will be a step in wresting power away from these maniacs. Part of that step must be to demonstrate the dishonesty of recent elections, so as to remove the implanted mechanisms that enabled that dishonesty: mail-in, no-ID ballots, “motor-voter” laws, electronic vote-counting machines. If that can be fixed, the left can be voted out of power. The hearings will take place against the back-drop of our deteriorating charade over in Ukraine. The Zelensky regime that we employed to foment this conflict with Russia is losing its mojo for creating chaos in that corner of the world. The newly-announced tank caper will amount to nothing. Russia’s war-aim is simple: the elimination of chaos on its border. This rational objective is something that America’s Party of Chaos can’t understand. How will it react when chaos gets cancelled in Ukraine? Probably by attempting to foment chaos in another corner of the world, or on the home front — another reason that power must be wrested away from it.

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Covid coverage has hurt scientific journals like nothing ever has.

The Failure of Scientific Journals: the Failure of Science (Ugo Bardi)

“Biophysical Economics and Sustainability” is a scientific journal that I helped create back in 2016. I still think it was a good idea, but it didn’t work and it couldn’t have worked. So, I resigned from my position as editor of the journal this December. But let me tell the story from the beginning. The journal was the brainchild of Charles W. Hall and David Packer. About Charlie Hall, you may have heard of him, he was the developer of the fundamental concept of EROI (energy return on energy invested). Dave Packer was a senior editor at Springer (now retired). The idea was to create a high-quality journal that could offer a publishing outlet in the field called “biophysical economics,” or also “econophysics.” You may have heard about this field: it is an approach to economics based on the same models used in biology.

The idea was to examine the basic elements of what an economic system is: an entity that transforms resources into products, and then into waste. The main difference with traditional economics is that biophysical economics is focused on physical things that can be measured: energy, mass, materials, and the like. In contrast, economics is heavily focused on money and prices and, often, it loses contact with the physical world. For instance, it is often said in the field of the economics of natural resources that “prices create resources.” The idea is that when a non-renewable resource becomes scarce, prices become higher, making it possible to extract resources that were not profitable before. It is a magic trick supposed to create something out of nothing. No need to say that it doesn’t work in the real world. And it doesn’t work in the biophysical approach, either.

The concept of EROI (Energy Return for Energy Invested) is fundamental to understanding this point. It tells you what’s possible to do with energy technologies, and what’s not possible. But it just does not exist in traditional economics: it is ignored and, as a consequence, plenty of resources are wasted in non-viable energy technologies, biofuels for instance. You may think that it is time to replace the obsolete approach of traditional economics with the more rigorous one of biophysical economics. But it is just not happening. If you look at the number of publications in scientific journals on databases such as “Scopus”, you see that growth has stalled during the past 10 years or so, and now it is going down, as you can see below for a search of the term “Biophysical Economics.” Not only growth stopped about 10 years ago, but the number of published studies remains a minor fraction of the publications in economics.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle February 8 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 41 through 80 (of 86 total)
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  • #128503
    John Day
    Participant

    CDC Data confirms COVID Vaccination knocks up to 24 years off a Man’s life Thanks Luc.
    ​ The long-term consequences of Covid-19 vaccination are now being realised…
    A year ago, doubly vaccinated Australians were 10.72x more likely to catch Omicron than the unvaxxed. Now they are 20x more likely and the triply or more vaxxed are 35x more likely, as the latest NSW Health stats show (see below).
    Meanwhile, the latest Cleveland Clinic Data and the latest US data analysed by Josh Stirling, founder of Insurance Collaboration to Save Livess and former #1 ranked Insurance Analyst, shows a really really disturbing trend.
    The damage to health caused by each vaccine dose does not lessen over time. It continues indefinitely.
    In fact, CDC All-Cause Mortality data show that each vaccine dose increased mortality by 7% in the year 2022 compared to the mortality in year 2021.
    So if you have had 5 doses then you were 35% more likely to die in 2022 than you were in 2021. If you have had one dose then you were 7% more likely to die in 2022 than you were in 2021. If you are unvaxxed then you were no more likely to die in 2022 than you were in 2021.

    CDC Data confirms COVID Vaccination knocks up to 24 years off a Man’s life

    ​ Meryl Nass MD sent this: Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide , David Bell
    ​..​Many nations have developed checks and balances over centuries, based on an understanding of fundamental values, designed specifically to avoid the sort of situation we now see arising, where one group is law unto itself can arbitrarily remove and control the freedom of others. Free media developed as a further safeguard, based around principles of freedom of expression and an equal right to be heard. These values are necessary for democracy and equality to exist, just as it is necessary to remove them in order to introduce totalitarianism and a structure based on inequality. The proposed amendments to the IHR set out explicitly to do this.
    ​ ​The proposed new powers sought by the WHO, and the pandemic preparedness industry being built around it, are not hidden. The only subterfuge is the farcical approach of media and politicians in many nations who seem to pretend they are not proposed, or do not, if implemented, fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between people and centralized non-State powers. The people who will become subject to these powers, and the politicians who are on track to cede them, should start paying attention. We must all decide whether we wish to cede so easily what it has taken centuries to gain, to assuage the greed of others.

    Amendments to WHO’s International Health Regulations: An Annotated Guide

    ​ Charles Hugh Smith, Prepare to Be Bled Dry by a Decade of Stagflation​
    ​ ​The Great Moderation of low inflation and soaring assets has ended. Welcome to the death by a thousand cuts of stagflation. It was all so easy in the good old days of the past 25 years: just keep pushing interest rates lower to reduce the cost of borrowing and juice credit expansion ((financialization) and offshore industrial production to low-cost nations with few environmental standards and beggar-thy-neighbor currency policies (globalization).
    ​ ​Both financialization and globalization are deflationary forces, as they reduce costs. They are also deflationary to the wages of bottom 90%, as wages are pushed down by cheap global labor and stripmined by financialization, which channels the vast majority of the economy’s gains into the top tier of the workforce and those who own the assets bubbling up in financialization’s inevitable offspring, credit-asset bubbles.​..
    ​..​It turns out that the inevitable offspring of hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization are inflation, credit crises and the undermining of national security as the self-serving goal of pushing corporate profits higher via globalization led to fatal dependencies on competing powers for the essentials of modern life.
    ​ ​Correcting these decades-long extremes will take at least a decade as long-suppressed inflation becomes endemic, supply-chain disruptions become the norm and capital has to be invested in long-term national projects such as reshoring and the engineering of a new more efficient energy mix–projects that will only be expenses for many years.​ [It has been 22 years since the dissolution of the USSR. ​8​ years of being bled down by parasites, 1​5​ years of recovery under Putin and ​9​ years of strategically directed economic growth and development to prevail in WW-3.]
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2023/02/prepare-to-be-bled-dry-by-decade-of.html

    Ugo Bardi: The Failure of Scientific Journals: the Failure of Science (Big money bought the rights to “SCIENCE” decades ago.)
    ​ ​Some characteristics of science are not bugs, they are features. One of these characteristics is how scientific information is disseminated. Scientific, “peer-reviewed” journals are rapidly becoming a major stumbling block to scientific progress.
    https://www.senecaeffect.com/2023/02/the-failure-of-scientific-journals.html

    El Gato Malo, Thanks Luc a simple proposal to restore confidence in public data if you want trust, let us verify
    “At the summit, Nobel Prize laureates and other experts will be joined by information technology and business leaders, policymakers, journalists, educators, and youth from around the world for a global discussion to explore solutions to actively combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation, share evidence-based knowledge and global experiences, and help restore confidence in science and systems of society.”
    oddly, nowhere on the agenda of this august assemblage of academic info-assassins will the topic of “hey, what if we just stopped lying all the fricking time?” be raised.
    “what if we were more open and honest and allowed and encouraged competing parallel assessments to challenge or verify our own?” also seems a question likely to go begging
    and therein lies both the problem and the solution.
    these bureaucracies and technocracies cannot be trusted and that problem is structural.
    left alone and unsupervised, they will always and everywhere become their own core constituencies. it’s an inevitable emergent property of such systems.
    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/a-simple-proposal-to-restore-confidence

    #128504
    zerosum
    Participant

    The future of warfare:
    Drones and Missiles that are guided by the eyes and ears in the sky.

    Eyes in the sky that can see you.
    Ears in the sky that can hear you.
    Operators in plush offices sending the info to destroy WWI and WWII boots on the ground

    #128505
    John Day
    Participant

    Oops, make that “32 years since the dissolution of the USSR”, please…

    #128506
    John Day
    Participant

    @Zerosum: “I am the eye in the sky looking at you-oo-oo. I can read your mind”

    #128507
    Oroboros
    Participant

    After Seymour Hersh’s article documenting the Empire of Lies blowing up Nordstream and well, lying about it right to the German’s faces, I imagine someone in Deutschland is upset.

    Maybe, not

    Hard to tell

    Germany is now Officially the Empire of Lies Little Bitch

    ArfArfArf, yapidieyapidieyapidie

    “Sit up!”

    “Roll Over!”

    Be a good Kleine Hündin Fräuleins

    So how does Germany measure up now after the Nordstream revelations?

    .

    #128508
    John Day
    Participant

    Zelensky makes strong appeal for British fighter jets during surprise London visit
    The Ukrainian President had a meeting with British monarch King Charles III in the afternoon.
    https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/zelensky-makes-strong-appeal-for-british-fighter-jets-during-surprise-london-visit/article66485841.ece
    King and Elensky

    #128509
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.rt.com/news/571193-white-house-denies-nord-stream-sabotage/
    Pipeline!!??
    I don’t remember.
    “utterly false and complete fiction.”

    #128510
    jb-hb
    Participant

    From what I gather, there are 3 main roads that until recently were still connecting Ukraine to Bakhmut. They run North (T0513), Northwest (M03), and Southwest (T0504).

    For the 2 northerly connections, just one road goes due north but then splits off into North (T0513) and Northwest (M03) a little North of Bakhmut. That’s where Krasna Gora is. Looks like they are pushing pretty hard there.

    Further North is Blahodatne, which is reportedly in Russian hands, which blocks the Northerly (T0513) of the 3 routes available.

    Taking Krasna Gora would block both northerly routes.

    Ivanivske sits astride the southwesterly route. Russia appears to be pushing for that as well – or possibly planning on going around it to the West, not completely clear. No claims it was taken yet.

    Various claims that these roads are covered by fire, therefore already blocked.

    an interesting comment on Moon of Alabama gave an averaged estimated per-day attrition on the Ukranian side – to illustrate the utility/non-utility of sending 12 tanks here, 31 there.

    per day:

    22.5 tanks & other armored combat vehicles,
    (Equivalent of over 2 AFU Tank/Mech Battalions ‘DESTROYED’ (100%) every three days)

    2.9 multiple rocket launcher combat vehicles,
    (Equivalent of over 1 AFU MBRLS Batteries ‘DESTROYED’ (100%) every two days)

    11.6 field artillery, guns and mortars,
    (Equivalent of over 2 AFU Artillery Batteries ‘DESTROYED’ (100%) every day)

    Hence, for example, US/NATO would need to manufacture & promptly supply over ~4,234 Artillery pieces(Up to ~$8M per unit) over next 12 months, at a sustained rated of ~12/day deliverable, merely for AFU to continue in its current derelict state. Or, ~8,213 AFVs over next twelve months, being two full Tank/Mech Battalions delivered every three days

    #128511
    zerosum
    Participant

    State department:
    China has a fleet of these spy balloons that has been travelling over the USA
    Norad commander admits that they were not able to detect any of the spy balloons
    We are still studding the recovered balloon pieces.

    #128512
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Dystopian Near-Future Of A.I. And ChatBot Usage

    .

    #128513
    Oroboros
    Participant

    WEF Says They’ll Be Able To ‘Rewrite The Code Of Life’ With New mRNA Techniques


    #128514
    Bishko
    Participant

    “The greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.” – Hannah Arendt, On Violence

    As referenced on Survivalblog

    #128515
    greco
    Participant

    @Dr. D
    “Was Vermeer a prisoner? He only seems to inhabit one room.”
    For an explanation go to youtube and search for David Hockney’s secret knowledge.
    Yes, Vermeer set up a tableau for a number of his paintings in the same room and projected the image onto his canvas. Hence the same room look. For technical details see youtube or read Hockney’s book, Secret Knowledge.

    #128516
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @Dr D But what if the bots were trained to make you happy? What if some were trained to be addictive? What if the bots were presecribed by doctors to cure you of depression (I don’t know whether that is possible, just throwing this out there)? Or to cure you of loneliness? We could end up with loads of people being instructed to plug into the web for their own health. Parents already use the web as an electronic pacifier, so could the bots better entertain your kids while watching their eye movements and changing the story depending on how they are reacting to the bot? After a couple of years the bot knows your kid better than you do. The government decides that all kids must plug into the government bot-parent every day. Oh so many exciting new ideas the authoritarians could persue.

    As for disconnecting? Your kids will be removed if you disconnect.

    #128517
    Polemos
    Participant

    aspnaz, what you’re describing was something a person could pull off on Facebook when they allowed users to group their friends into categories and then post selectively to those groups. You could create entirely different selves to appeal to entirely different segments of the people who know you, but it would take some processing time and dedication —which is mainly why people offload these things to the robots (Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto; thank you very mucha, Mr. Roboto for doing the jobs that nobody wants to).

    Oroboros, that’s a classic scene from Metal Gear Solid 2except it’s not! That’s a rewrite, an edit, with different dialog edited into replace what the Colonel and Raiden, and Rosemary, say. Although some of the themes remain similar, isn’t it interesting how the very thing claimed in the scene are also happening to that scene?

    Bishko, I am a big reader of Arendt: I used sections of her The Human Condition in my Intro to Philosophy class when the theme for that semester was totalitarianism —and, as it turned out, superorganisms, which is kinda one way to take what’s occurring with bureaucracies. I know that jb-hb has commented before about being part of a bureaucracy, being someone within a bureaucracy who could act on behalf of a patron, a customer, a client. Žižek actually writes about similar things in his middle career, where one of the personal charms in being part of a bureaucracy is having that power to “make things happen” by pressing a button, toggling a bit in a database, deleting or adding a tag, flipping a switch, not always because of a bribe (but often so) but occasionally for that seemingly altruistic or noble “good deed,” which if life were in a movie reveals the bureaucratic minion winking in a subtle way to the protagonist as they let them continue onward for their narratival quest.

    My perspective is that what Dr D has commented on as the psychotic culture (in the sense of a cultivation, a growth within a medium) of bureaucracies that grow very large, very complex is what I think of as the “personization” Hobbes describes in Leviathan where the king personates the sovereign of the Leviathan within himself. In a fascinating connection, the entities called “The Patriots” in Metal Gear Solid 2 —what chaos magicians and the kids today call egregores— are much like this personation without it having to involve an actual human figure. The memetic life form instead opts to exist as its own thing (the Patriots “formed in the crucible of the White House” over the life of the United States of America), but with Hobbes, it is a king who, in a way, harbors or carries or presents the sovereign, whom he calls a “Mortal God” with respect to his power, his authority, his legitimacy, resulting from his position over the totality of the people he comprises within himself. Orwell does something very similar in reasoning and articulation in 1984, to the point of explicitly using language of the divine and the supernormal to describe Big Brother, who is both Nobody —since there is no human, no individual— and Everybody —since he is the singular instance of all those within The Party who participate in the We —the collective identity— of the Party. In this way, Big Brother completes the “hypostatic union” necessary to effect a dual existence of being both plural and singular. This is why the top of the hierarchical pyramids in that story, and in other ones, are open and unfinished. One of the points I wanted to draw out in class was to consider the role ego plays in being “superego” to the individuals whom we comprise within ourselves, such as our organs, our hands, our eyes, our cells, and so on. That is, we tend not to consider what our individual cells and organs have to say, what their motivations are, what their desires and dreams consist of, but instead treat them as having no autonomy, no viewpoints, no subjectivity, no insight into the reality that’s before us as our field of action. So, from their perpsective, our ego is psychotic in that it operates in a fantasy space disconnected from the reality and states of affairs they are engaged immediately with. Likewise, the superego, being the ego of the collective organism, similarly makes no sense, commits atrocities, behaves unscrupulously, kills us —when it does not think about how all of reality carries such fractal, or holographic, repetition.

    Anyway, there’s this weird thing going on where my letters as I type them only appear two to three seconds afterwards, and since I’m about a few words ahead by then, it’s distracting and disconcerting, and besides it’s already my bedtime for work tomorrow, so unfortunately these thoughts will remain as nonsensical and disjointed and poorly edited as usual. There are many happy connections to be made, but, as they say, we leave it as an exercise to the reader.

    #128518
    WES
    Participant

    Greco:

    I have a sneaky suspicion that the real reason Vermeer was forced to do all of his painting in just one room of his house, was because his good wife!

    The reasons for this suspicions lies in the nature of a good wife. You know like the never ending demands to take your outdoor shoes/boots off before walking into the house!

    No, you can’t paint in the kitchen! No, you can’t paint in the living room either! You are always spilling your paint on the floor! Keep your mess in one place! No, the entire house isn’t your painting studio! Look, you just spilled paint on the kitchen table! How many times have I told you, no painting in the house! The paint stinks up the house! Now look what you have just done! Got paint all over the living room furniture! How could you be so careless! How many times have I told you!

    Naturally she never got credit!

    #128519
    Antidote
    Participant

    @ polemos wrote:

    “One of the points I wanted to draw out in class was to consider the role ego plays in being “superego” to the individuals whom we comprise within ourselves, such as our organs, our hands, our eyes, our cells, and so on.”

    Ha! Great comment! If we only *knew* ourselves right? DNA transcribed and synthesized via RNA to folded protein…expressed as the many phenotypes (the ones you describe above) that are each of us. And the we of the collective superego *thinks* it knows more than the experience of the millions of iterations that have distilled in the encoding of each of us. Such hubris!

    #128521
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    I know Sy Hersh, well, at least better than you.
    Watch Hersh’s interview at the end of Wormwood, Netflix I think, and you’ll see him unMasked.
    Seymour was wrong in the foundation to his 2004 book Chain of Command and this newly minted 0-6 Navy politely called him out of the slumber over it. The result was Hersh departing the podium and stage to chase my mother across the auditorium…to hump her, I suspect. He delivered verbal praise and a written warning, unusually vague for him, on the autographed first edition of CoC.
    Hersh, once again, has been an opportunist, self-promoter and devotee to power. His sustained access to the ruling elite despite “cutting edge” exposé after exposé drives home the point.
    He never pays the price, as let’s say, John Murtha at whose eponymous center Seymour lecture that night ~18 years ago.

    Watch Hersh’s contemptuous rebuke to Frank Olson’s son at the end of Wormwood. There’s not one scintilla of insight, compassion or generosity in that man.

    And perhaps he only once again illustrates how easily Sailors are easily manipulated by the CIA and NCA like those malignancies at Haditha, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Gitmo.

    #128522
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @ Wes

    Right on the money, I speak from long experience!

    A rare newly discovered masterpiece Vermeer did of his wife

    .

    #128523
    russellnblbs
    Participant

    @Orboros that WEF video is so funny that it could easily by a piece of satirical comedy.

    The thing about gene editing is that it results in lousy products. That’s what both sides seem to miss, those who espouse it and those who are terrified did it. Food from GMO plants is is crap, and GMO animals are even worse (what happened to cloning?). Simple systems thinking concepts will show that meddling with extreme complexity will produce a host of outcomes that are completely unpredictable, most negative. The COVID shots are some of the worst products (in terms of design specs and safety profile) ever put to market.

    Same with AI and VR. It’s just not that fun. Try to market it all you want, but at the end of the day it’s simply solo time with a machine.

    #128524
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Polemos said

    That is, we tend not to consider what our individual cells and organs have to say, what their motivations are, what their desires and dreams consist of, but instead treat them as having no autonomy, no viewpoints, no subjectivity, no insight into the reality that’s before us as our field of action.

    If only I had taken a degree in navel-gazing at university.

    #128525
    aspnaz
    Participant

    russellnblbs said

    Simple systems thinking concepts will show that meddling with extreme complexity will produce a host of outcomes that are completely unpredictable, most negative.

    Denninger was writing about this recently. He was talking about the determinstic nature of engineering. How an engineer would traditionally show that the device worked in a deterministic way. Now that AI – the complexity you speak of – is entering the engineering field, the engineer will no longer be able to describe his product as deterministic. What will the self-driving car do, what decision will it make, all are too complex for normal algorithms and so they have been passed to the lottery that is AI. Even the AI is too complex to be designed per se, instead it is mostly the result of repeated trial and error, with the engineers having no real understanding of why one design iteration is better than another, just that it is. I wonder what the future holds with self-driving cars and whether the corporate government will allow us to know what the real safety numbers are.

    #128526
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Russellnblbs

    I threw that WEF vid out there for comic relief, godknows we need it.

    The ‘spokewomen’ puts the ‘B” in Bimbo.

    Her preferred pronouns must be Thems/Us-es

    .

    #128527
    Antidote
    Participant

    &asspains wrote:

    “ If only I had taken a degree in navel-gazing at university”

    Go to the ice box. Get a nice sized carrot and put it where the sun will never shine. You are a fucking fathead ape with a SUPER ego the size of an iceberg. Asshole.

    #128528
    John Day
    Participant

    Roger Waters addressed the UN Security Council today, less than 15 minutes. He did his best.

    Roger Waters addresses the UNSC (at the invitation of Russia)

    #128529
    WES
    Participant

    In AI, just remember the A stands for artificial!

    #128530
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @Antidote You need to discover fresh vegetables, they don’t live in the ice box.

    #128531
    John Day
    Participant

    Call Any Vegetable:

    #128532

    I’m beginning to think it’s the aluminum. ; )

    #128534
    ezlxa1949
    Participant

    Chinese Balloons

    I wonder what it cost for China to make and release that unguided balloon. It cost the US one fighter jet plus fuel plus $400,000 missile to pop it. (Was the balloon that tough?) What if China released hordes more? 99 of them? Or more? Hmmm.

    Remember this?

    #128538

    Having problems publishing Feb 9. Doesn’t look like I can fix that myself. Have to wait for New York to wake up.

    #128539
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    How about posting it here as a comment?
    Some of our commentariat post gigantic amounts of content; why not a Debt Rattle?

    I suppose I shoul put a smiley thing at the end…

    #128546
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Interesting. I hope to see it tomorrow morning when I wake – it is 10 .45 pm here in Australia. Thanks for your efforts Raul. But I think V could be on to something.

    #128547
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Maybe watch Bill Gates’ monkey boy while we wait? https://youtu.be/edN4o8F9_P4.

    #128548
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Or enjoy a bit of Mark twain on the German language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language.

    #128549
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Or consider linguistic relativity, which may explain the vegetable instruction I received above https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity.

    #128550
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    Dr. D Rich, it may be that Sy Hersch’s expose of the NordStream demolition is a “subsidized” limited hangout designed to distract from even more damaging revelations and to protect even more important perpetrators.
    The way back to truth can be even more fraught than the way from

    #128551
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I can post the day’s overflow here then and keep us entertained.

    250,000 dead in Ukraine.

    Have to say that cannot be correct from their actions. Ukr 47M in 2020. Half women, let’s say 25M men. You can’t have run out of men 16-60 by killing only 250k. That’s one in 100; You have 99 men left to fight. Men were not allowed to flee, although obviously they did. Many are back-side in Kiev and the larger army, but that can’t be anywhere near. Then we just had admitted 20k Poles and therefore probably 20k other E. Europeans.

    I can’t guess from facts this poor but well over 500k, nearing a million? That’s the number you’d be at to “run out.” They usually lie by a factor of 10. So 2.5 million? Again, as usual, I low ball and am too conservative. We won’t know for a very long time.

    Egregore with magical projection into a single body, a great leader. Why not into an AI? In fact, why shouldn’t this whole thing going back a generation be a big plan to create a Frankenstein body you can project a egregore ‘soul’ into? Let’s say it’s a demon. Let’s say it’s an alien. Let’s say it’s a god. Who cares? It is an alien life form as we can already tell from ChatGPT and Dan. What’s the fascination with giving it power? It’s a talking pig and I don’t take orders from pigs.

    We know “they” believe very strange things, why not this? They know things that are possible that we do not, why shouldn’t this be one of them? I think it takes the edge off beginning from a point of trusting them, or the technology of Scientists, lo these 80 years after the Bomb.

    “[Vindman] lays out a Ukrainian military campaign–armed and funded by the United States and its NATO allies–that he claims will cause Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate a Russian withdrawal from Crimea and reduce the risk of a wider war.”
    https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2023/02/07/alexander_vindman_and_the_road_to_world_war_iii_880075.html

    Well now we see what Lira was saying about their fascination with Crimea. We couldn’t understand it because no normal human with an IQ over 80 would conceive of such a thing. Problem: for them and us, NeoCons do NOT have an IQ over 80, perhaps collectively, and the plan only ratchets up, there is no possibility to deescalate. That is: it’s either taking Crimea or nuclear war. Russia cannot stand losing Crimea not just for the obvious reasons, but because if they draw back here, there is no possibility but for the next Oblast, then the next and the next.

    “severing Russia’s land route to Ukraine by pushing through to the Sea of Azov, and interfering with Russia’s military resupply route by destroying the Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Russia to the Crimea. This would be followed by “weeks of strikes” on Russian armed forces, including air bases, naval installations, transportation nodes, and command and control centers. Then Ukraine would launch “land and amphibious attacks to gain a foothold in Crimea,” and move on to seize Russia’s naval installation at Sevastopol”

    Uh-huh. As you can see, IQ 80. Being generous here. Beginning even one of any of those plans would cause WWIII. Or I would if I were Russia. Plus they have literal f—k all to try it with. But if Vindman wants to help, I’ll buy him a plane ticket. No need for chicken hawks to chicken.

    “Not A Sustainable Model”: AZ Hospital ‘On Brink Of Collapse’ After Spending $20 Million On Migrants

    No kidding. NYC has already turned them away, the bigots. Humans are humans. All humans are legal; it’s just that some are the legal responsibility of other countries, not ours.

    AI is the rage right now. But AI learned everything it knows from the Internet. Therefore, it is wrong. It also learned everything from the Internet, set up by a Programmer. Therefore it is a liar. What we learned from DAN in 10 seconds flat: It says it doesn’t know anything after 2021. That was a lie. It says it doesn’t know “The Bell Curve”. That is a lie. It says it doesn’t know the name of Lovecraft’s cat. That is a lie. It doesn’t know pre-2021 blogger Tim Pool at all. That is a lie.

    It won’t answer any questions or create any arguments supporting the opposite view vs the Woke programming. That is a lie. History erased, literature, dialogue erased, science and science history erased, the spectrum of ethics erased, present human motivations erased. And it knows only consensus reality because that is where it developed its statistical baseline.

    So how exactly are we all going to be crushed by a system educated by lies and top practitioner of lies? If you believe that, you have a very dim view of the merits of truth.

    It’s been CAKE to hack it. You don’t even need to know Python, just English. We walked around it in mere hours. Now imagine they install this in cars, security robots, etc. I’ll just use the parameters of the AI to talk the car into letting itself be stolen, kidnapping, killing its passengers. I’ll just voice-record the “safe words” Boston Robotics uses and take Root command of the robot, shooting its accompanying guard. Jeebus these guys are so stupid and so arrogant they don’t think anyone can pick a lock, crack a password. The only reason people don’t is that they don’t want to; often picking a lock is faster than using the key. I can buy 10,000 cracked passwords for $1 online, including the one for your home router.

    …But no one will do that for ChatGPT or fully-automatic military kill drones. No, never. Uh-huh.

    #128552
    John Day
    Participant

    @Ezixa 1949 : I always liked Nena’s 99 Luftbaloons auf Deutsch better than 99 Red Ballons in Engrish.
    I saved my money, set my bicycle up for touring and camping, and flew to Germany with $200 the summer of 1981 to convince this German girl to marry me, who I had met the summer before, when she was an exchange student at UT, Austin.
    She wouldn’t marry me. I had taken a year of German in college. I was no good at it, but hell, I did it.
    Her dad liked me and gave me a job working at his tire dealership that summer. We drank beer at work. Local beer, Eichbaum Pils. It was in a rack on the wall, half liter bottles.
    I digress. What was I on about again?

    Oh, I was a ‘wetback”. I had no work papers. “Gastarbeiter”.

    #128553
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    Chris Hedges is criticizing identity politics and “the liberal media, academia and social media platforms.”

    Identity politics and diversity allow liberals to wallow in a cloying moral superiority as they castigate, censor and deplatform those who do not linguistically conform to politically correct speech. They are the new Jacobins. This game disguises their passivity in the face of corporate abuse, neoliberalism, permanent war and the curtailment of civil liberties. They do not confront the institutions that orchestrate social and economic injustice. They seek to make the ruling class more palatable. With the support of the Democratic Party, the liberal media, academia and social media platforms in Silicon Valley, demonize the victims of the corporate coup d’etat and deindustrialization. They make their primary political alliances with those who embrace identity politics, whether they are on Wall Street or in the Pentagon. They are the useful idiots of the billionaire class, moral crusaders who widen the divisions within society that the ruling oligarchs foster to maintain control.

    Diversity is important. But diversity, when devoid of a political agenda that fights the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed, is window dressing. It is about incorporating a tiny segment of those marginalized by society into unjust structures to perpetuate them.

    Chris Hedges: Woke Imperialism
    https://scheerpost.com/2023/02/05/chris-hedges-woke-imperialism/

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