Apr 302023
 
 April 30, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Mark Chagall I and the village 1911

 

Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT)
Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular Truths About The Ukraine Proxy War (ZB)
Medvedev Calls For ‘Complete’ Dismantling Of ‘Kiev Regime’ (RT)
Medvedev Sees No Point In Maintaining Diplomatic Relations With Poland (TASS)
Russian Next-Gen T-14 Tank Makes Ukraine Debut (ZH)
Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)
Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India
Morocco Supplies Spain With Russian Diesel – El Mundo (RT)
US Troops Drill For Taiwan War – Media (RT)
Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)
EU Reaches Deal On Ukrainian Food Imports (RT)
War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry)
Hunter’s Collapsing World: A Criminal Plea Could Now Be Best Option (Turley)
No Buyer for First Republic Bank at Any Price (Mish)
Irish President Condemns ‘Obsession’ With Economic Growth (Leahy)

 

 

 

 

Lavrov
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652184461302276096

 

 

 

 

Doctorow

 

 

Net zero

 

 

 

 

“..why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?”

Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s main adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has claimed that China must follow the West’s position on Ukraine or “lose its influence, including economic influence.” Beijing has given no indication that it intends to take his advice. “Now China has to make a choice,” Podoliak said on Ukraine’s Rada TV on Friday. “Either it works within the framework defined by international law, and then replaces Russia in the full sense of the word, or China continues to stand aside and then it will gradually lose its influence, including economic influence.” Podoliak’s statement came two days after Zelensky and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone, their first known conversation since Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began last February.

According to the Chinese side, Xi stressed that Beijing’s “core position” on the conflict is that “dialogue and negotiations are the only viable way out.” The US has repeatedly called on China to condemn Russia over the conflict, which Beijing has refused to do. Instead, China and Russia have deepened their diplomatic and trade links, and officials from both countries have repeatedly condemned the US for attempting to impose what it calls a “rules-based international order” upon the world through military force and sanctions. China and Russia have instead called for the construction of a multipolar system based on the rule of international law and respect for the UN charter. “Right now there are changes – the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi told Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last month.

Podoliak has attempted to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing before. Late last month he asked the Italian Corriere della Sera newspaper why China would “help Russia, which is experiencing the collapse of its civilization?” “It would be an irreversible investment, and China is too pragmatic to make such mistakes,” he added. However, even if China were to break from Russia, it would still face a United States hostile to its interests. The Pentagon’s most recent National Defense Strategy lists countering the supposed “threat posed by China” as its number one priority, while Washington has blocked the sale of some semiconductor manufacturing hardware to China and rallied its Asian allies to shut Beijing out of this vital industrial sector. Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has said on several occasions that he would use the US military to defend Taiwan – which China considers its territory – from a potential Chinese invasion.

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“It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.”

“..Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.”

“We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.”

Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular Truths About The Ukraine Proxy War (ZB)

The last time that Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces General Rajmund Andrzejczak generated media attention was in late January after he elaborated on how formidable Russia remained at the time, but now he’s once again making headlines for building upon this assessment. Poland’s Do Rzecy reported on his recent participation in a strategy session with the National Security Bureau, during which time he shared some unpopular truths about the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine. Andrzejczak said that the situation doesn’t look good for Kiev at all when considering the economic dynamics of this conflict, with him drawing particular attention to finance, infrastructure issues, social issues, technology, and food production, et al. From this vantage point, he predicts that Russia can continue conducting its special operation for 1-2 more years before it begins to feel any structural pressure to curtail its activities.

By contrast, Kiev is burning through tens of billions of dollars’ worth of aid, yet it still remains very far away from achieving its maximum objectives. Andrzejczak candidly said that Poland’s Western partners aren’t properly assessing the challenges that stand in the way of Ukraine’s victory, including those connected to the “race of logistics”/ war of attrition” that the NATO chief declared in mid-February. Another serious problems concerns refugees’ unwillingness to return to their homeland anytime soon. These economic, logistical, and population factors combined to convince him that he must urgently raise the greatest possible awareness of these problems in order to “give Ukraine a chance to build its secure future”, which in the context that he shared this motivation, is a euphemism for even more Western aid. He elaborated by adding that “As a soldier, I am also obliged to present the most unfavorable and difficult to implement variant, giving a field to all those who can and should help Ukraine.”

Nobody should therefore doubt Andrzejczak’s intentions or suspect that he’s a so-called “Russian agent” since he sincerely wants the West to win its proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, but he’s also very worried that it might lose unless his side acknowledges the unpopular truths that he just shared. In his view, their failure to do so could doom Kiev to defeat, though the argument can also compellingly be made that indefinitely perpetuating this conflict like Poland seeks to do might be even more disastrous. After all, none of the three challenges that he drew attention to can be overcome anytime soon. The only exception might be the population one, but that would entail changing EU legislation in order to allow the expulsion of refugees, which is unlikely to happen. The economic and logistical factors are systemic ones, which affect not only Ukraine, but the entire West in general. It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.

As Andrzejczak himself admitted, “We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready not only to send equipment to Ukraine, but also to replenish our stocks, which are melting.” Considering that Poland is Ukraine’s third most important patron behind the Anglo-American Axis, this strongly suggests that all other NATO members are struggling just as much as it is to keep up the pace, scale, and scope of support, if not more since many are a lot smaller and thus less capable of contributing in this respect. Accordingly, this observation means that Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will likely be its “last hurrah” prior to resuming peace talks with Russia since the West won’t be able to keep up its assistance for much longer. Andrzejczak seems keenly aware of this “politically inconvenient” fact, hence why he wants his side to give its proxies as much as possible until the end of that operation in the hopes that they can then be in a comparatively more advantageous position by the time these talks recommence.

Cavoli
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652039270784180246

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“Otherwise, they will not calm down, and the drug-addled nonsense can turn into reality and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country does not need that..”

Medvedev Calls For ‘Complete’ Dismantling Of ‘Kiev Regime’ (RT)

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has called for the “complete dismantling” of the “Kiev regime,” as well as for inflicting “mass destruction” on the country’s military personnel and hardware. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of Russia’s National Security Council, made the remarks in a Telegram post on Friday, commenting on an interview Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently gave to several Nordic media outlets. He summarized Zelensky’s comments as consisting of demands for more weapons from Kiev’s Western backers and promises of a successful counteroffensive, including an attack on Crimea, while also warning that the conflict may drag on for “decades.” While the interview appeared to be “contradictory” and “delusional,” even such statements should not be underestimated, Medvedev warned.

“One should not underestimate even delusional speeches. This is a hysterical manifesto of the Kiev regime, which is seeking to consolidate its Nazi elites, maintain the morale of the troops and receive additional support from its sponsors.” To successfully foil Kiev’s plans, Russia must inflict “mass destruction of personnel and military equipment” during the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive and inflict a “maximum military defeat” on Kiev’s military, Medvedev said. Ultimately, the “Nazi regime in Kiev” must be “completely dismantled” and demilitarized throughout the entire territory of “former Ukraine,” he added. Apart from that, Russia must pursue those who manage to flee, and seek “retribution” against the “key figures of the Nazi regime, regardless of their location and without statute of limitations,” Medvedev stressed. Anything short of that would not suffice, the ex-president believes.

“Otherwise, they will not calm down, and the drug-addled nonsense can turn into reality and the war will drag on for a long time. Our country does not need that,” Medvedev said. The ex-president has repeatedly warned Kiev against any attempts to seize the Crimean peninsula, which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and joined Russia after locals overwhelmingly supported such a move during a referendum. Last month, Medvedev issued a nuclear warning to Kiev, cautioning that any attempt at a “serious offensive” targeting the peninsula would be “the basis for the use of all means of protection, including those provided for by the fundamentals of the Doctrine of Nuclear Deterrence.”

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“This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries..”

Medvedev Sees No Point In Maintaining Diplomatic Relations With Poland (TASS)

Russia sees no sense in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland as long as anti-Russian forces remain in power, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Twitter page on Saturday. “I see no point in maintaining diplomatic relations with Poland. This state must not exist for us while there is no one but Russophobes in power and Ukraine is full of Polish mercenaries, who should be ruthlessly exterminated like stinky rats,” Medvedev wrote in English and Polish.


Medvedev’s tweet was posted in the wake of the situation with the school at the Russian embassy in Warsaw. Andrey Ordash, Minister-Councilor at the Russian embassy in Poland, told TASS that the Polish authorities had demanded that the staff of the Russian school at the embassy in Warsaw vacate the building by 7 p.m. on Saturday. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia deems the Polish authorities’ intrusion into the Russian embassy school in Warsaw as a blatant violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention and another encroachment on Russian diplomatic property in Poland. The Foreign Ministry said that Warsaw’s steps would not remain without Moscow’s firm response and consequences for Poland.

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It won’t be their last new toy.

Russian Next-Gen T-14 Tank Makes Ukraine Debut (ZH)

While Western nations are working to upgrade Ukraine’s ground game with US M-1 Abrams and German Leopard 2 tanks, Russia has now introduced its latest-generation tank into the war in Ukraine, according to Russia’s state-owned RIA. The new Russian tank is the T-14 Armata, which features an unmanned turret, with a three-man crew operating the vehicle from what RIA describes as an “isolated armored capsule located at the front of the hull.” The tank has a maximum highway speed of 50 miles per hour. It’s equipped with a 125mm smoothbore main gun with a reported range of 8 kilometers. The gun is fed by an automated loader with a 45-round capacity, and can also fire laser-guided missiles.

On defense, it has both reactive armor that explodes outward upon a projectile’s impact, and an “active protection system” (APS), which BBC has described as “essentially an anti-missile system for tanks, with radars capable of tracking the incoming anti-tank missile, and projectiles that are launched to disrupt or destroy it.” The T-14 is additionally distinguished from predecessor T-90 tanks by having higher ground clearance. A developer also claimed the tank would have technology to hide it from radar- and heat-seeking targeting systems: “We essentially made the tank invisible.” RIA reports the deployed T-14s have received “additional side protection from anti-tank ammunition.”

Until now, T-14 appearances have been largely limited to a series of Moscow Victory Day parades stretching all the way back to 2015, though RIA says they have been “tested in Syria.” [..] The initial order called for 2,300 of them to be delivered by 2020. However, the UK claims “production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat,” and suggested its introduction in Ukraine may largely be for propaganda purposes. Of course, that jab may itself be propaganda.

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Mutti knew exactly what was going on with the Misk agreements. No use denying it.

Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel said she used every means at her disposal to try to prevent the current conflict in Ukraine. “I used everything at my disposal to try to prevent this situation,” Merkel said, commenting on the Russian special operation in Ukraine on Saturday in an interview with the German daily Die Zeit. “The fact that it failed is not proof that it was wrong to try,” she stressed. Diplomacy is a “necessity,” as the ex-Chancellor noted.However. Merkel repeatedly defended her policy towards Russia. She called the efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine after the events in Crimea in 2014 as part of the so-called Minsk agreements correct.

“I support these diplomatic efforts,” the former head of the German government said, adding that she was “very worried” about Ukraine. “To my great chagrin, there were quite a few who were not interested in this,” Merkel admitted. According to her, in the European Council Germany and France, made efforts to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.= The ex-Chancellor of Germany said that she talked a lot with the former President of Ukraine Pyotr Poroshenko and the current President Vladimir Zelensky. “President Zelensky was very critical of the Minsk agreements. He already said this during his election campaign and noted that he considers it unfeasible,” Merkel stated.

She noted that, according to Ukrainian political leaders, this agreement is not popular in Ukraine, and it was very difficult to implement it politically. In an interview with Die Zeit, published on December 7, 2022, Merkel stated that the 2014 Minsk agreements were an attempt to let Ukraine gain time. She said “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been frozen and the problem had not been resolved. Russian President Vladimir Putin later said that he found Merkel’s statement completely unexpected and disappointing.

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“..the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month..”

Europe Is Buying Record Amounts Of Refined Russian Fuels Through India

Last August, we were the first to show how Russia was bypassing Europe’s so-called commodities embargo: it was selling LNG to China which was then re-selling it to Europe at a substantial mark up. And while we also frequently reported that Russia was using a similar sanctions bypass for oil, this time using India instead of China, few were willing to confirm as much: after all, it would seem very shortsighted if European consumers were paying an extra surcharge to India, while Russia was not suffering any adverse consequences from Europe’s laughable “sanctions.” Not any more: on Friday, Bloomberg reported that for all of Europe’s fire and brimstone about an embargo (which has gotten decidedly quieter in recent months), “Russian oil is still powering Europe just with the help of India.”

As we reported at the time, last December the EU barred almost any seaborne crude oil imports from Russia. It extended the prohibition to refined fuels two months later. However, the rules didn’t stop countries like India from snapping up cheap Russian crude, turning it into fuels like diesel, and shipping it back to Europe at a big markup: as shown in the chart below, just the Brent to Urals price differential, a byproduct of the Russian sanctions, is about $25/bbl, almost a third of the price of a barrel of crude. The markups on Russian product are even greater when dealing with refined products such as gasoline or diesel. In fact, India has become so good at reselling Russian oil to the same Europeans who refuse to buy it directly from Moscow for a much lower price, that the Asian country is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.


In other words, Europe is still buying Russian oil, keeping Putin’s military machine well-funded, but because of the virtue signaling exercise of buying Russian oil though a mediator, the transaction ends up costing Europeans billions more than if they simply had purchased the oil directly. “Russian oil is finding its way back into Europe despite all the sanctioning and India ramping up fuel exports to the west is a good example of it,” said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at the firm. “With India taking in so much Russian barrels, it’s inevitable.”

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They all do it.

Morocco Supplies Spain With Russian Diesel – El Mundo (RT)

Morocco is purchasing Russian diesel and other refined products at discounted prices and re-exporting the fuel to Spain, El Mundo reported on Friday, citing ship tracking sources. Data from navigation tracking portal Vesselfinder showed that, on April 28, at least three tankers were heading from Russia’s Baltic ports to Morocco carrying approximately 170,000 tons of oil products on board. The North African country, which bought about 600,000 barrels of Russian diesel throughout 2021, ramped up imports of the product to 2 million barrels in January 2023, with another 1.2 million barrels arriving in the country in February, according to tracking sources. Morocco’s fuel exports almost stopped after its only processing plant was shut down in 2015 over unpaid taxes and legal hurdles, leaving the country dependent on refined oil imports.

In the beginning of the year, Rabat resumed fuel supplies and expanded exports of diesel from its Horizon Tanger terminal to Spain, Türkiye, Ghana, and southern Africa, the outlet said. In January, the country sent 280,000 barrels of diesel to the Spanish Canary Islands and another 270,000 barrels to Türkiye. “At the end of 2022, Morocco began to buy diesel fuel from Moscow at an average of more than 7 million liters per day. In parallel, Rabat began to export it to Spain,” the outlet wrote. According to ship tracking data, Moroccan deliveries now account for 10% of monthly Spanish demand for diesel, estimated at $60 million. According to some media reports, in March, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria accounted for 30% of Russia’s diesel exports.

Meanwhile, the Spanish government has pledged to ensure that no Russian fuel enters the kingdom. “Our obligation is to investigate what happens with the fuel [supplies],” Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Teresa Ribera told reporters on Friday. “Initially, it comes with documents confirming its appropriate origin,” she added. Russia has been diversifying its energy supplies in response to Western sanctions after the EU stopped accepting the country’s oil transported by sea. In December, the EU, G7, and allied countries imposed an embargo and a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian crude. Similar restrictions were introduced in February for exports of petroleum products.

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Posturing.

US Troops Drill For Taiwan War – Media (RT)

The US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has reportedly carried out drills simulating its response to a Chinese seizure of Taiwan for the first time, reflecting rising concern in Washington that Beijing may try to seize control of the self-governing island by force. The Taiwan scenario was played out as part of the USAOC’s annual capabilities exercise, known as CAPEX, at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, Military.com reported on Saturday. Troops practiced being inserted into Taiwan to help defend against a Chinese offensive, using a concrete mock-up on the base to simulate the environment in which they would fight the People’s Republic of China (PRC). “The PRC, in accordance with our national defense strategy, is our true pacing challenge out there,” Lieutenant General Jonathan Braga, commander of USASOC, said in a speech before the exercise on Thursday. “Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is prevent World War III. That’s our job.”

The drills included firing recoilless rifles, breaching tunnels and operating Switchblade drones, the media outlet said. The special forces used some of the same weaponry and tactics employed during Washington’s so-called War on Terror, along with “other tools reflecting a seismic shift for the command as it prepares for potential conflict against major military rivals.” It’s unusual for USASOC to identify the opposition force so directly during APEX, “given the military’s hesitancy to overtly suggest conflict,” according to Military.com. US-China relations have deteriorated in the past year amid Beijing’s refusal to join in a Western sanctions campaign against Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Chinese officials have accused US leaders of emboldening separatists in Taiwan, such as when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taipei last August. China responded by breaking off defense and climate ties with Washington and launching massive military drills in the Taiwan Strait.

The US government recognizes, without endorsing, China’s claim to sovereignty over Taiwan. For decades, Washington has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” keeping Beijing and Taipei guessing as to whether, and to what extent, the US military would intervene if China invaded Taiwan. However, President Joe Biden has repeatedly hinted that Washington would come to Taiwan’s aid militarily in the event of a Chinese offensive. Washington think tanks have conducted wargaming exercises in recent months to simulate how a war over Taiwan might play out. One such study was done for a congressional committee by the Center for New American Security, which found earlier this month that US forces would be unable to resupply Taiwan with weapons and equipment once a Chinese offensive began. An exercise done by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that although US and Japanese forces would be able to successfully repel Beijing’s offensive, they would lose dozens of warships, hundreds of planes, and thousands of troops.

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“Such restrictions, for whatever reason, do not comply with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market..”

Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)

The Ukrainian authorities have sent notes of protest to the Polish and EU embassies, decrying the restrictions on imports of the country’s agricultural products to the bloc. This was announced on Saturday by Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oleg Nikolenko in a Facebook post. According to Nikolenko, Ukraine considers the restrictions “utterly unacceptable.” “Such restrictions, for whatever reason, do not comply with the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement and the principles and norms of the EU Single Market,” he wrote. The minister noted that Kiev has “all legal grounds” to immediately resume its exports to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria and continue uninterrupted transit of all Ukrainian products to other countries both inside and outside of the EU. “The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry urged its [EU] partners to find a balanced solution based on EU legislation, the Association Agreement, and in the spirit of solidarity,” he added.


Earlier this month, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria unilaterally banned the import of agricultural products from Ukraine in a bid to protect their domestic markets, which has been overflowing with cheap Ukrainian products. Romania did not impose an import ban, but joined the other four in calls for Brussels to free the region of Ukrainian goods. After two weeks of discussions, the European Commission and the five member states struck a deal on Friday, which involves replacing the individual bans placed by the countries on Ukrainian imports with “emergency safeguard measures” for four major staples – wheat, maize, rapeseed, and sunflower seeds. Sources claim that imports of these crops into the five Eastern European countries will likely be blocked unless for transit.

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They treat Ukraine like a member. It’s not.

EU Reaches Deal On Ukrainian Food Imports (RT)

The European Commission on Friday struck an agreement with five EU member-states to help clear the supply glut caused by Ukrainian agricultural imports. The announcement was made on Twitter by EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis. “The European Commission has reached an agreement in principle with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania & Slovakia regarding Ukraine agri-food products. We have acted to address concerns of both farmers in neighboring EU countries and Ukraine,” Dombrovskis wrote on the social media platform. According to the official, the key elements of the new deal include the withdrawal of unilateral import restrictions previously placed by the countries on Ukrainian agricultural produce, a €100 million ($110 million) support package for the member-states’ farmers, and “emergency safeguard measures” for four Ukrainian staples – wheat, maize, rapeseed and sunflower seeds.

Dombrovskis did not elaborate on what these emergency measures would entail, but sources claim that the imports of these crops into the five Eastern European countries will likely be blocked unless for transit. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the deal, saying that it would help guarantee the transit of Ukrainian produce. “This agreement preserves both Ukraine’s export capacity so that it continues to feed the world, and the livelihoods of our farmers,” she tweeted. In June last year, the EU lifted tariffs and quotas for Ukrainian agricultural imports for one year in order to enable grain from Ukraine to be shipped to global markets amid the conflict with Russia. Many of the shipments, however, ended up in Eastern European countries, flooding their markets with cheap produce and sparking protests among local farmers.

Earlier this month, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria unilaterally banned agricultural products imported from Ukraine in bid to protect their markets. While Romania had not imposed its own import ban, it joined the other four in urging Brussels to find a solution to the glut of Ukrainian produce. Import bans were deemed “unacceptable” by Brussels, as they undermined the bloc’s single market rules. The news of a deal on Ukrainian food imports followed a decision by EU ambassadors to extend Ukraine’s tariff-free access to the bloc’s market by another year. However, the extension is still subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and EU countries in the coming weeks.

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“The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine..”

War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t the only one demanding more military assistance from President Biden to protect Kiev from Russian forces. So too is a close Delaware friend and financial backer of Biden, who owns several luxury car dealerships around the Ukrainian capital. By sending billions of dollars in weapons and other military aid to help defend Ukraine, Biden also is securing the investments of millionaire car magnate John Hynansky, a Ukrainian American and longtime supporter of the president. Over the course of Biden’s political career, Hynansky and his family have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns, including $8,000 in 2020, Federal Election Commission records show. Hynansky family members have been guests at the White House, and Hynansky has floated hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to Biden family members, property records show.

Hynansky’s son, Michael, who helps run his car empire, lent the use of his Lear jet to Biden when he was a senator. Since Russia started shelling the area around Kiev in February 2022, the U.S. government has spent $77 billion to help Ukraine rebuild and repel future attacks. Government ethics watchdogs say the president’s friendship poses a potential conflict of interest that demands a full accounting of how the massive foreign aid, which includes open-ended humanitarian and economic assistance, has been used and who has benefited from it. On the military side, moreover, billions of dollars have gone to unspecified areas, such as “security,” “intelligence,” and “training.” In the past, Hynansky has supplied the police cars and ambulances in several regions of Ukraine.

[..] The connection between Joe Biden and Hynansky’s business ventures dates back to 2009, when the then-vice president made his first visit to Ukraine. In a speech in Kiev to government officials, Biden singled out Hynansky for praise, noting that he had just had breakfast with “my very good friend, John Hynansky.” (The previous year, Hynansky had individually contributed more than $33,000 to the Obama-Biden ticket primarily through the Obama Victory Fund, according to FEC records.) Within months of his hobnobbing with the vice president and local officials in the Ukrainian capital, Hynansky scored his first international development loan from the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, or OPIC, a federal body whose board was appointed by President Obama.

Hynansky used the $2.5 million to break ground on a new headquarters and massive distribution center outside Kiev that prepares 8,000 cars for sale every year. In 2012, Hynansky landed another $20 million in OPIC funding to expand his dealership facilities, federal records show, helping him corner roughly 25% of the luxury car market in Ukraine. “The proceeds of the loan will be used to construct and operate two new, state-of-the-art dealership facilities for Porsche and Land Rover/Jaguar automobiles, and repay any outstanding balance of an existing OPIC loan,” according to a 2012 OPIC financing document.

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Without implicating the Big Guy?

Hunter’s Collapsing World: A Criminal Plea Could Now Be Best Option (Turley)

This week, Hunter Biden’s defense team traveled to Delaware seeking an update on the federal criminal investigation that has dragged on for almost five years. The reason seems clear: Time is running out on Hunter and the Biden family. After years of delaying disclosures and admissions, Hunter could now be pushing to cap off the criminal side of the scandal before more information is released in Arkansas and Washington. For the White House, even a criminal plea is preferred if they can avoid one particular claim — and they may be succeeding. For years, the Bidens have worked (with the media’s help) to delay any recognition of the influence peddling and corruption that may be revealed on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Even this week, in child support proceedings in Arkansas, Hunter’s counsel continued to refuse to admit ownership of the laptop abandoned at The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Del., in April 2019.

It won’t work any more than his long refusal to acknowledge his fathering of his four-year-old child, Navy. Just as Hunter could not deny DNA, forensic and other evidence will soon make his laptop denials untenable in proceedings in which he and his counsel are required to tell the truth. These proceedings are now colliding for the Bidens. With the laptop being raised in Arkansas and being investigated in Washington by House committees, time is up and the Biden team knows it. An establishment of the laptop’s authenticity in one forum could produce cascading effects in the other forums. There has already been a recent shift to a scorched-earth strategy, including reportedly threatening possible witnesses and calling for the IRS to investigate critics.

New leaks from the Justice Department investigation have indicated that prosecutors are considering four charges: two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes and a potential felony count on falsifying a form linked to a gun permit. Those four charges could well result in jail time, but the situation is likely to get worse for Hunter if the House reveals new evidence of foreign dealings and payments. That is why a capstone plea could control the damage for both Hunter and his father. A capstone is designed to protect against erosion and even help to hold together an arch that might otherwise collapse. This capstone plea could avoid a worst scenario (and charge) that would undermine years of denials by both Bidens.

However, there was one conspicuous omission from the list of potential charges that may also indicate a reason to push toward a plea. There is no mention of a charge as an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA). The Justice Department aggressively used this charge against Trump figures like Paul Manafort and, if the same standard is applied, it is hard to see the basis for discarding the charge in the Hunter Biden case. The laptop shows emails from various foreign sources, including some with close connections to foreign governments and intelligence services. There are also records of visits of clients and business associates to the White House as well as pictures with then-Vice President Joe Biden. Finally, there are emails showing Hunter reached out to high-ranking officials like Antony Blinken for “advice.” Now our secretary of state, Blinken was then deputy secretary of state.

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“..merger accounting rules would require a buyer to immediately mark down FRC’s assets to fair value..”

No Buyer for First Republic Bank at Any Price (Mish)

In one of the biggest bank collapses ever, First Republic Bank is down 96 percent in two months. But look on the bright side. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) fared even worse. At least FRC is still kicking. It rose 8.79 percent on Thursday. You likely can’t give FRC away. There would be no takers. Its assets are worth less than zero. That’s because merger accounting rules would require a buyer to immediately mark down FRC’s assets to fair value. FRC lost $100 billion in deposits. And unlike SVB, it is stuck with severely underwater mortgage loans. The FRC business model was to give ridiculously cheap mortgage loans to high-wealth clients in return for their business. When that model started blowing up, clients pulled their deposits.


Given all around silliness by banks chasing yield, any buyer would likely have to raise capital which would hammer their own share price. According to the WSJ, Autonomous Research analyst David Smith commented “It might cost you $30 billion of capital to buy the bank for free.” If the run on assets continues, either the Treasury or the Fed is likely to step in. Elizabeth Warren would then moan about the Fed bailing out the wealthy. If the bank went under, she would moan about something else. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen repeated her comment that the U.S. banking system remains sound and the U.S. government will take “any necessary steps” to keep it the strongest and safest financial system in the world.

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“envisage our future utopia”, suggesting that Ireland must “rebalance economy, ecology and ethics..”

Irish President Condemns ‘Obsession’ With Economic Growth (Leahy)

President Michael D Higgins has condemned the “obsession” with achieving economic growth in a speech on Friday that was implicitly critical of the economic policies pursued by successive governments. In a reception at Áras an Uachtaráin for Tasc, a think tank dedicated to social change, the President delivered a typically wide-ranging speech that featured a strong critique of economic policy that seeks to prioritise growth, a condemnation of “neoliberalism” and an evaluation of the shortcomings of the teaching of economics at universities. He also urged those present to “envisage our future utopia”, suggesting that Ireland must “rebalance economy, ecology and ethics”. And he insisted that the current exchequer surplus was not just the product of corporation tax receipts from multinationals, but “has been made possible by an educated and hard-working population”.


“Many economists remain stuck in an inexorable growth narrative, or at best a ‘green growth’ narrative,” he said. “A fixation on a narrowly defined efficiency, productivity, perpetual growth has resulted in a discipline that has become blinkered to the ecological challenge – the ecological catastrophe – we now face. “That narrow focus constitutes an empty economics which has lost touch with everything meaningful, a social science which no longer is connected, or even attempts to be connected, with the social issues and objectives for which it was developed over centuries. It is incapable of offering solutions to glaring inadequacies of provision as to public needs, devoid of vision.” Later he added: “Our obsession with inexorable economic expansion expresses, perhaps, a desire to transcend our material limits and rise above the state of nature. Yet this growth fixation paradoxically increases the potency of those very limits. “A deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation and a globalisation defined solely by trade densities has precipitated this ecological crisis.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Fern
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652411867732557825

 

 

 

 


Greta oto, also known as glasswinged butterfly, has transparent wings with a span of 5.6 to 6.1 cm

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle April 30 2023

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  • #134377

    Mark Chagall I and the village 1911   • Zelensky’s Top Adviser Threatens China With Economic Ruin (RT) • Poland’s Top General Has Some Unpopular
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle April 30 2023]

    #134379
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Greta oto

    When comparing oto to Thunberg, I see the following wins for oto:
    – Pretty.
    – Nice legs.
    – Flies using its own physical energy.
    – Transparent.
    – Not a gnome.
    – Lives in nature.
    – Does not travel in billionaires, hyper-carbonized yachts.
    – Does not nag.
    – Does not pretend to be outraged about climate.

    Can we vote for oto as out eco spokesman? We do all live in the shiniest democracies, just ask the Economist Intelligence Unit.

    #134380
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s main adviser, Mikhail Podoliak, has claimed that China must follow the West’s position on Ukraine or “lose its influence, including economic influence.”

    Yup, Kiev is the world capitol. They run the planet and tell everybody what to do down to the tiniest decision.

    I’m sure China, which could shift a little in their seat and squish them forever, will obey immediately.

    My guess is Ukraine has money laundering blackmail on all those countries listed in that pic. But China doesn’t do their money laundering through Ukraine. They do it themselves, at home.

    “Podoliak has attempted to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing before.”

    Who? I’m sorry, I only follow people who are relevant, from countries that are relevant. And as I say daily, it’s not 1962. There’s no wedge to put between Russia and China. The other part was, even back then, we didn’t advertise our strategy and gameplay. We just “had diplomacy” between nations, then “random things happened” in the background that we caused, and the unspoken result was to encourage Russia and China not to align. We now look back and say “ha ha” while at the time keep your mouth shut.

    “It’s simply impossible to sustain the pace, scale, and scope of the West’s multidimensional aid to Ukraine if the conflict drags on.”

    No. It’s possible. But you would have to do it. That means hardship that you would have to get popular consent for. They haven’t bothered to ask or try yet.

    ““We just don’t have ammunition. The industry is not ready”

    Like Harvard MBA’s, they are incapable of thinking of human beings, who in their prefect world of theory, don’t exist in any way, shape, or form. That’s what makes it perfect! Ah! No humans. All dead. Wot a relief! Peace at last. …In this case, they natter on like baboons about “Arms” and “Ammunition” when they no longer have “men”. Are they planning on conscripting all several million African Migrants out of France, handing them guns, and driving them into the Russian Front Line? Because that’s the only place you’ll find men, and I assure you they won’t go. Those guns would come in real handy in Paris right now.

    These Harvard MBAs will fight a war by production of arms, good advertising, truck them to warehouses on the front line, where the crates of material goods can stare down the Russian army from the shelves, very sternly, mister. …Just kidding! Harvard MBAs don’t know how to produce goods either. Obviously.

    I’m just fed up at this point with killing the entire nation of Ukraine in an ethnic genocide — 99% on the men – erasing the nation from the planet, perhaps forever, specifically paying, lavishly, to have that done…and then not noticing. What Jews? There were no Jews in Germany, no trains, no camps, whaddya talkin’ about? There were no Oglala Sioux on the plains, so obviously we couldn’t steal the land of a people that don’t exist…etc.

    ““We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.” — A former president from around 1954.

    ““mass destruction” on the country’s military personnel and hardware.” — Medvedev

    They’re trying to kill Putin so someone much more violent will be in charge. #Winning.

    “While Western nations are working to upgrade Ukraine’s ground game with US M-1 Abrams”

    Except those need to be shipped over the ocean, and the T-14 can drive to school. Newsflash: tanks are heavy.

    Our tanks are from 1980, which compared to WWII, would be like using a tank from 1900. I’m sure that’ll be fine and not a problem at all.

    • Merkel Says She Used Everything To Try To Prevent Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

    She even signed a treaty, didn’t enforce it, specifically to buy time to make an X00,000-man, NATO trained army to invade Russia and make an ethnic genocide! Then admitted it all on national TV. I mean, what do you want from me? If breaking treaties and creating Nazi armies of ethnic cleansing doesn’t say “Peace” I don’t know what does!

    Even right now. They’re all about Peace! They’ll do anything except stop sending $200Billion dollars in direct arms, cash, and hundred thousand mercenaries. And tell Ukraine they have to have an offensive and can only negotiate after every Russian has been removed for 1,000 miles. But other than that, it’s Peace all the way down!

    India and Coconut pic:

    Particularly Raul may be interested in the Ora Linda, https://sacred-texts.com/atl/olb/index.htm / https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40986/40986-h/40986-h.htm a text from Holland going back to 400BC. In it, we find Greeks in Holland, trade and traffic with Libya and Morroco, Crimeans, and so many other things. In this case, We find their world-wide – and quite common – sea traffic bringing news from India:

    In our country there are nuts as large as a child’s head. They contain cheese and milk. When they are old oil is made from them. Of the husks ropes are made, and of the shells cups and other household utensils are made. I have found in the woods here bramble and holly berries. In my country we have trees bearing berries, as large as your lime-trees, the berries of which are much sweeter and three times as large as your gooseberries. When the days are at the longest, and the sun is in the zenith, a man’s body has no shadow. If you sail very far to the south and look to the east at midday, the sun shines on your left side as it does in other countries on the right side. With this I will finish. It will be easy for you, by means of what I have written, to distinguish between false accounts and true descriptions.—Your Luidgert.”

    That’s ridiculous! Who has ever seen a tree with nuts as large as your head? That give cheese and milk? Seriously, some people will say anything to get attention! The Science is settled! There are NO such nuts. Sheesh. Next thing you uneducated idiots will be saying swans are black…

    “Kiev Decries EU Restrictions On Ukrainian Imports (RT)

    Did I miss something? Ukraine is not in the EU. It wouldn’t be great to put the most corrupt nation on earth in there, before Turkey. …Especially right after trying to assassinate their President. Again.

    “War Threatens Ukraine Auto Empire of Biden Megadonor (Sperry) “

    The President is a Russian puppet. Bombshell. Walls are closing in.

    “Just as Hunter could not deny DNA, forensic and other evidence will soon make his laptop denials untenable in proceedings in which he and his counsel are required to tell the truth.”

    No they won’t. Don’t be ridiculous. The media won’t report it, just as they didn’t report the world’s largest terrorist attack on NordStream, then didn’t report one of the most famous journalists reporting the attack, with step-by-step accuracy.

    Without Tucker, you can’t hear about it, so it never happened. And Tucker wasn’t fired. He still works for Fox News, and is therefore unable to speak publicly in any equal capacity to report the news. Best silence of all truth is the one I pay for. Fox and America are so Capitalist they lose billions overnight in order to never make money again, in order to PAY HIM to (not) do this. Yup, that’s Capitalism for ya.

    U.S. Largest Bank Failures:

    No Capitalism = no bankruptcy. There are no rules of law, therefore, none of these matter anymore. We have slowly, systemically erased all law until we do whatever we like. When it has problems, we print money to fill it whenever we like, and give it to whoever we like for any reason we like, in any quantity we like.

    P.S. that https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2023/04/28/254-a-tale-of-two-economies/ on “Who Takes the Loss” or “whose ox is gored” is very smart and will be the most directly relevant thing said all week. They need to erase all law so they CAN simply decree who takes the multi-trillion losses, and quite obviously also kill a few million people to take the edge off how many losses there are. As they say, they need the system to fail, but also hold together well enough that their power is not unseated. I’d say this is going extremely well, but takes a lot of time.

    “The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy. “ — Jesus H. Christ, the only man who committed no sins.

    Just kidding, it’s Dwight D. Eisenhower

    Other quotes: “2 + 2 = 4” — Adolf Alois Hitler. This quote is now therefore untrue. Make of it what you will. Good luck with that algebra class.

    #134381
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    My goodness; you do go on, don’t you……………………

    #134382
    Dr. D
    Participant

    You ain’t seen nothin’. As you know, this is a slow day.

    “A Tale of Two Economies”
    #254: A tale of two economies

    Following this, if I were the ruling class, and I knew – or someone told me – the earth was an extremely violent place, and overdue for a planetary or solar system calamity, I would what? A) Build massive underground bunkers, or DUMBs B) Get a space program to colonize other planets such as the moon and Mars. This is a necessity, for the human race as a whole, that we do not get knocked back to the Stone Age again, and human culture can survive. That is to say: no cost is too high. All behavior of any sort, no matter how violent, is morally justified.

    C) To do this, we would require a productive economic foundation, and size, on the home planet capable of supporting such enormous, expensive projects. To do that, we need a lot of people, a lot of engineers, a lot of scientists, a lot of soldiers, etc. Such that, unlike Belgium in 1700, if 100,000 paid, militarized men necessary to accomplish this task disappeared, no one would notice them missing – no whole country would become inexplicably vacant, attracting questions.

    As this rapid-fire shock-project is slowly created, accomplished, and paid for, we find two things: one, that the entire planet becomes inexplicably impoverished, sapped of all wealth and brainpower. Second: allowing the population to increase has caused a predictable, but difficult-to-control compounding of human population that also saps the necessary resources for the Space/Planet project, as they must be fed and amused.

    At some point, fairly easily predicted and tuned with your own actions, the outrun of the Breakaway Society and the base Planet diverge too much, just as we see in his “Financial Economy” vs “Real Economy” charts. It’s not that we have too little oil – as discussed elsewhere with +50 year pipeline contracts monthly, whole nations nearly untapped – it’s that population is compounding too quickly and WE need that energy for OUR project: you can’t have it.

    So having accomplished their major gains: a space-age society, AI, automated robotics, the underground and above-atmosphere bases, we simply don’t need all the human base anymore, and they are more of a drain on us than they’re worth. They’re also asking questions, breaking through secrecy, and unseating governments that we use to accomplish our larger, more important goals. If they were reduced 90% we would only take a minor hit to the Space/Planet Program, yet would allow planetary stability to re-emerge.

    Therefore, since about 1980 you would run the system increasingly as if the world was ending, and law, property, civil unrest doesn’t matter. After the appropriate meetings, you would then actively decide in real time when you had gotten advanced enough and safe enough to reverse and shake off 1 – 6 Billion useless people. You therefore don’t care, and never cared, that the actual production would outrun the financial GDP promises, since you were always going to have a war and renege on them anyway.

    An argument could be made that we are at that point, and the reversal has been put into action, such that the base economy is put back to size comparative to this, still-theoretical, Breakaway Society, leaving all their real goals intact, and indeed, because of their leverage of technology, ensuring their personal dominance over this planet forever. They have Space Cars and you have bows and arrows. Like the Hunger Games.

    So having built it all, they are now harboring all resources for their next phase. Perhaps all the copper in Arizona and all the oil in Russia needs to go to Mars or a city-sized orbital base, to ensure our stability should the earth fall back into an Ice Age, or be hit by a comet as happens regularly in geologic history. The only way to get that copper at a reasonable price is when there are no competitors for it on earth, and no one has the power to resist your removal of it for their own ends.

    All these conditions are met, and others are being put in place each day. Why? Because otherwise, their economic and political actions make no economic, social, scientific, or personal sense, and that seems somewhat difficult to believe. This will also tell you why they don’t CARE. Why in fact they appear to even WANT this war, unrest, collapse, and destruction. Being highly active about causing it, while openly publishing that fact. They need the population reduced, say they want it reduced, take actions to have it reduced, and are powerful enough behind the scenes that they feel confident you can’t stop the Breakaway Society they are drawing their power from. This would help explain why even Russia is so careful: they have a sense of how powerful this secret, reserve army is were it to be broken out of hiding and applied to the present war. As powerful as NATO, but since we clearly see that NATO is an unarmed, unfunded Boy Explorer Troop, more powerful than NATO. NATO was supposed to be the “Larger military budget than the next 10 nations combined” but has 100-year-old rifles. “Where’s my money, Brian? Where did it go?”

    So you have 30 years of 10x all nations compbined spent and have nothing? Now THAT is a wild and wacky conspiracy theory. They didn’t put “digits” into a “bank”. They dug up ore and made SOMETHING. But something we can’t see or count. So where is it? Where’s my 30 years x 10x money, Brian?

    It IS somewhere. And it IS somewhere hidden, not just in Pelosi’s pathetic mansion a hobo can break into. So where is it?

    You tell me.

    This, plus that we’re nowhere near out of energy, have 50-100 more years of it, is what the “Energy Economics” smart guys are missing, although what they are printing is deeply felt and much needed. Because they don’t see this, they can’t comprehend that running financial-fantasy economics and real economics, and all the people that will riot and be killed by it, ISN’T AN ACCIDENT. Therefore, there’s nobody to warn. “They” already know, and the People, already don’t care.

    Only a few like ourselves may know, credit it, yet we’re on a sinking ship and not in command. Does that help us? And if so, how? What is to be done?

    #134384
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    V. Arnold: You should be so lucky…

    #134385
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @V. Arnold I blame you.

    #134386
    zerosum
    Participant

    Did you hear the tree falling in the forest?

    Complexity is a random generator
    ————–
    Poor management by the snobs – glut/scarcity

    Feed the meat grinder with immigrants/poor/powerless/disadvantaged/sick/ignorant/obedient/mercenaries

    #134387
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The strange thing about oligarchs fighting – which is the current world status – is that they are all totally capable of eliminating the other oligarchs. I know it will happen: one oligarch will spend big bucks ridding the world of another oligarch, then the flood gates will open and they will all start spending their money killing each other until there is only one retarded oligarch left. I want to watch this movie.

    #134388
    zerosum
    Participant

    You did notice the new meat grinder , Killing field, that the USA as opened in its fight for survival.

    #134389
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Another note on the revenge hit on the Ukronazi – NATOturd bunker by hypersonic missiles in response to the raid into Russian territory in March

    Andrei Martyanov on his blog Reminiscence of the Future said a couple weeks ago that the Russians, having access to all the old Soviet bunker blueprints, had found a weak spot in the NATOturd command bunker.

    It was the ventilation system.

    Sweet

    The arrogance of NATOturd and the Ukronazis about being ‘invulnerable’ and then parking their cars right outside the entrance to the bunker (OMG how smug) got all several hundred of them killed.

    The wages of sins

    Look for the Empire of Lies Military Mafia to try and sneak their dead Goombahs from this Ukronazi bunker into Arlington Cemetery as ‘heroes’ (cough,gag,cough)

    They are not heroes, they are war whores

    Dead war whores now

    .

    #134390

    He does go on, and I read every word.

    I particularly liked part 2 today. A wild, but highly plausible imagination is a splendid gift.

    #134391
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Six days a week Serbian cable channel “happy” features one and a half hour long program where three knowledgeable guests discuss and share their opinion about current geo-political issues of today. Evening, eight PM, it covers mainly war in Ukraine, then new alliances, digital currency, vaxx, all of interest from countries in the world especially the US – in
    another word all that we at TAE are interested in, Commercial free, no stone is left unturned. What a concept and what a treat with the real cold cuts,cheese, home made brandy and good company.

    #134392
    Nemowillobserve
    Participant

    If D’s theory is correct it would make Ukraine and it’s thousands of miles of underground infistructure quite the valuable realestate. An immenent catastrophic event sure does explain the malignant oligarchs current actions. A while back Elon said he was more worried about a solar eruption than global warming. His gov funded endeavors- boring tunnels, electric cars, space craft, the colonization of Mars and transhumanism. How is it possible that Ben D is not censored on the tube? Openly challenges the coof and openly dismisses agw?

    #134393

    If I add Ben Davidson to Dane Wiggington, I can make a case for “the bad guys” to be making our atmosphere into a mirror to reflect the main impact of the micro-nova that’s about to happen.
    Many up-worlders might live through the burst, but die of the Darkness…

    #134394
    Oroboros
    Participant

    As someone recently pointed out, Ukraine is not a country anymore

    The Empire of Lies took it over in 2014 and made it a sock puppet.

    It is not a country, it’s just a concept, a media hologram, a synthetic Ukrainian ‘identity’

    The bio-labs, the money laundering, the drug narco feudalism, the Euroturdistan Prostitution Empire, the child slave pedo medical experiment organ harvesting, it’s all a shell corporation subsidiary of Empire of Lies Inc.®

    So Ukraine can not ‘fall’, it’s not even a country

    From Dmitry Orlov:
    April 24, 2019
    https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/04/24/the-saker-interviews-dmitry-orlov/

    “This political concoction was supposedly held together by a Ukrainian ethnic identity, which is itself a concoction.

    The Ukrainian language is some combination of southern Russian village dialects with a bit of Polish thrown in as flavoring.

    It has a lilt to it that Russians find enchanting, making it well suited for folk songs. But it never had much practical merit, and the working language of the Ukrainians was always Russian.

    Even today Ukrainian nationalists switch to Russian if the subject matter is demanding enough.

    Religiously, most of the population has been for many centuries and still is Russian Orthodox.In my conversations about the Ukraine with many Ukrainians over the years I discovered a shocking truth: unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians seem to have exactly zero ethnic solidarity. What binds them together is their commonality of historical experience as part of the Russian Empire, then the USSR, but this historical legacy is being actively erased.

    After the Soviet collapse and Ukrainian independence there followed a campaign to de-Sovietize and de-Russianize the Ukraine, deprecating this common historical legacy and replacing it with a synthetic Ukrainian identity based on a falsified history that is alien to most of the population.

    This fake history lionizes Nazi collaborators and attempts to rub out entirely all memory of the Ukraine’s once very active role in the larger Russian world.

    Thus we have a mostly Russian-speaking, historically mostly Russian territory where most of the people speak either Russian (some of them with an accent) or a sort of Ukrainian patois called Surzhik, which is Ukrainian-sounding but with mostly Russian words (the overlap between the two languages is so great that it is difficult to draw the line between them).

    Supposedly ‘proper Ukrainian’ is spoken in the west of the country, which had never been part of the Russian Empire, but it’s a dialect that is mostly unintelligible in the rest of the country.…”

    .

    #134395
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Actual climate science and current data, plus an ominous warning, are presented here.

    Around a year from now, we will likely know just how bad effects of the current shift in wind, ocean and heat transfer patterns will be and how devastating their effects will be.

    (Not for viewing by planetary meltdown deniers and those who think that proxy-generated data from hundreds of millions of years ago are indicators of current trends).

    #134396
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    @Dr. D

    Ye have lost faith for the magic of price-seeking in free markets. No doubt it takes a similar mind devoid of empathy for the masses to concoct national, continental or planetary programs for eradication of those same masses. Their unemotional demeanor is perceived as shrewd, stoic Leadership to 99-percenters
    Dwight certainly paid a hefty price for his imperfections in a perfect world guided by ill-informed price seeking.

    Plus Jesus wasn’t without sin, original type, imperfection or wouldn’t have visited John Baptist.
    Rather the vessel of his birth was the object of the Immaculate Conception

    #134397

    Covid Psyops fun from (where else?) Yale: messaging.
    Which ones did your loved ones use on you?

    #134398
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Afewknowthetruth, you JUST SAID yesterday that CO2 increased 1.2%!!!

    Omitting that you meant on a relative basis, using EXACTLY THE SAME deceptive, misleading methods as used to lie about effectiveness of the not-a-vax.

    Apr. 27, 2023 424.60 ppm = 0.042460% – HUNDREDTHS of a percent here – of the atmosphere
    Apr. 27, 2022 419.56 ppm = 0.041956%

    0.042460% – 0.041956% = 0.000504% change

    1.2% ÷ 0.000504% = 2,380.95

    Again I ask you – how did it FEEL to lie to us by a factor of 2,380?

    But trust you. A year from now, we’ll see. Just trust. Believe. Have faith.

    And you didn’t even apologize

    #134399
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    My goodness; you do go on, don’t you……………………

    #134400
    Observer
    Participant

    jb-hb – You seem like a knowledgeable chap but you are also pretty nasty. Given the increase in extreme weather events I’d suggest you hold your tongue, comment in productive ways and let other express themselves as well. Everyone has an opinion and should be able to express that opinion without derision from others.

    #134401
    jb-hb
    Participant

    What increase in extreme weather events? Please cite sources.

    And if People Shouldn’t Be Big Meanies and are therefore Nasty, please cite the times you advised Afewknowthetruth in a similar manner. No times?

    What derision?

    If someone mentions the mathematical fact that:

    —They used the same relative math as the vax

    —They used it to lie by a factor of 2,380 (they multiplied reality by 2,380 and said THAT was reality to us)

    Is math NASTY to you?

    #134402
    Dora
    Participant

    WHO treaty.

    #134403
    jb-hb
    Participant

    He’s espousing a very, VERY, VERY nasty belief whose main effect and apparent goal is to demoralize. He posted a damn MANIFESTO this past December detailing it. 7-8 billion people would be better dead. It’d be better if you never existed or at least died now. At LEAST exist as little as possible and carry immense shame while you do it.

    The Climate Extinction message that has strangely become government POLICY all across the west, the same quasi-religious belief being drilled into everyone through every medium, to CHILDREN by their teachers and every other institution – YOU are the virus, innocent child, just starting out, you teen, you college student, you young adult just starting out.

    Based on lie after lie. And I DEMONSTRATE he is lying. Therefore you conclude I’M being nasty. For being a big enough meanie to contradict his thinking. Right.

    Do YOU believe that everyone is obligated to pretend along with people disconnected from reality or they are evil? Or perhaps obligated to treat it “fairly,” just as valid? Potentially just as valid?

    No, I’m being nasty eh?

    #134404
    John Day
    Participant

    Dr.D and Nemowillobserve seem to have a good synthesis today.

    #134405
    Oroboros
    Participant

    New Sport

    Drone Catching

    #134406
    Observer
    Participant

    Obviously I expect the same from AFKTT and all commenters. Just because we are all anonymous doesn’t mean we can’t be civil. Tone is important – you can express an opinion but please don’t be so arrogant (read: nasty) about it. There was actually nothing wrong with AFKTT math – he (I assume he) was calculating the year on year changes of one atmospheric gas relative to the units it was expressed in – there has been approx. 5ppm change year on year, which compared to last year is about 1.2%.
    Your calculations are equally valid from your perception of the problem. You could have expressed your view as an alternative way to examine the math rather than point blank saying AFKTT is wrong (and implying he is an idiot).
    Please accept that AFKTT thinks that climate change (and ecological overshoot in general) is a problem and hopefully AFKTT accepts that you don’t think it is an issue. Have a rant, express your viewpoint but please don’t let it get nasty.
    As a geologist/ecologist, I myself think that climate warming (brought about by ecological overshoot, where CO2 is an exhaust gas of our exorbitant energy consumption) is a problem – Ecological overshoot is documented across all realms of natural science literature. Climate tunnel vision is a real problem and governments will solve nothing without looking at the bigger picture.
    Some personal observations of ecological overshoot and climate warming from NZ (Airstrip 5 in AFKTT language): When all the glaciers that I visited just 20 years ago have either melted or now have massive terminal lakes in front of them, and one can now now longer hike on the lateral moraines as there is no ice to support them properly then something is wrong. When species of warm-water tropical fish are regularly caught south of the subtropical convergence zone then something is wrong. When approx. 90% of seabird species are now threatened because their young can’t dive deep enough to reach food sources that would normally be in cold surface waters because those waters are now warm, then something is wrong. When rates or erosion and runoff are so high that seagrass species and entire ecosystems that depend on that seagrass are wiped out because of siltation rates that are too high then some thing is wrong. When plant fungal diseases are endemic and spreading to previously safe areas because the ‘weather’ is now warmer and moister then something is wrong.
    There are many sentinels to suggest that substantial change is afoot – a lot of these sentinels live in or by the ocean. The oceans are adsorbing 90% of the excess energy imbalance derived from changing atmospheric chemistry (this will be in addition to unknown heat load from subsea volcanism which fluctuates). This is not to say that it hasn’t happened in the past (the geological record asserts this) but as mentioned previously it’s the rate of change that is of most concern. I’m pretty sure that humans are the factor that has upset the balance and increased the pace far more than e.g. volcanic eruptions from the past and changes in sun cycles. Entire ecosystems are in trouble and humans are not islands – climate change might not kill us but general ecological overshoot very well could with climate change being a large contributing factor.
    With respect, my two cents.

    #134407
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Empire of Lies won’t have a standing Army in five years with current personnel quitting left right and center and recruitment only drawing from a pool of less than 25% of Duh’merican youth because of drugs, obesity, and general academic stupidity.

    The Whole World is Laughing

    at the Empire of Lies

    https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1652295460135088132/photo/1

    #134408
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    .

    #134409
    Observer
    Participant

    I don’t think anyone wishes to see mass human suffering – but what if it happens? Realistically, there is not much we can do about it if mother nature is in control – it is the nature of life that there is death. What death looks like is entirely up to us. We can try to minimize the impact but we shouldn’t deny that we are in trouble and we should acknowledge that our psychology seems to prevent us from working together. We can theoretically already feed and provide resources for the projected 10-11 billion souls predicted as our peak population, but we certainly can’t do it if we (as a species) carry on as we are with our waste and disregard for our environment. We are geologically and energetically constrained. Climate change or no climate change, that is a problem.

    #134410
    Observer
    Participant

    I don’t think anyone wishes to see mass human suffering – but what if it happens? Realistically, there is not much we can do about it if mother nature is in control – it is the nature of life that there is death. What death looks like is entirely up to us. We can try to minimize the impact but we shouldn’t deny that we are in trouble and we should acknowledge that our psychology seems to prevent us from working together. We can theoretically already feed and provide resources for the projected 10-11 billion souls predicted as our peak population, but we certainly can’t do it if we (as a species) carry on as we are with our waste and disregard for our environment. We are geologically and energetically constrained. Climate change or no climate change, that is a problem.

    #134411
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Observer said

    jb-hb – You seem like a knowledgeable chap but you are also pretty nasty. Given the increase in extreme weather events I’d suggest you hold your tongue, comment in productive ways and let other express themselves as well. Everyone has an opinion and should be able to express that opinion without derision from others.

    Keep it up jb-hb, you should not be nice to people who continuously lie and tell us they want us all dead, it is your duty to society and indeed the other readers of TAE who would like to stay alive. Observer is obviously sympathetic to the lying and killing, adding a taste of its own lies but calling it “opinion”. Shame on Observer.

    As for being allowed to express an opinion without derision from others, how old are you, five? Afraid the real world is not like that, after all there are people in the real world who want you dead and will tell you that to your face. Being nice to those people is a low priority in my world, same as being nice to the vaccinators is pretty low priority in my world.

    #134412
    Oroboros
    Participant

    VP Kamalalala

    Gonzalo swears she is always high on pot

    Hmmm……

    “Tomorrow will be today, tomorrow.”

    Groovy

    #134413
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Kamalalala can also speak volumes on Climate Change

    Climate Change, by the way, also fits nicely into the “Tomorrow will be today, tomorrow” meme

    Weather forecast: Tomorrow will be very High

    Hahahahaha

    Kamala Harris’s Dad Calls Her Out for Perpetuating Pot-Smoking Jamaicans Stereotype

    .

    #134414
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Observer said

    We can try to minimize the impact but we shouldn’t deny that we are in trouble and we should acknowledge that our psychology seems to prevent us from working together.

    Shouldn’t deny that we are in trouble? Wow, this is confused. You think that being nice is what enables us to work together? Let me tell you a story: one of the nicest people I know, she was head of PR in the Hong Kong government, obviously a senior position. She brought up two very well adjusted children and has a great husband. She was telling us how, 30 years ago, just after the HK handover, the HK government decided to run a recycling campaign to improve their image abroad. They put out recycling bins and lots of publicity telling people to split their garbage into the different bins. The campaign was a success, people were dividing up their rubbish as instructed. The only problem with this story is that in the senior meetings that this lady attended, the managers openly admitted that the garbage collectors would have to collect these bins and put them into landfill. Yes, the whole campaign was a fraud, there was no recycling going on, all the divided up material was going to the landfill, as it had done before.

    Why would such a nice person participate in such a big lie to her own fellow citizens? She has many other similar stories to tell, so why would the same nice person, aware person, then get vaccinated when Covid came around? Being nice has nothing to do with anything. It may make you “feel” better but it does not fix anything. In fact, the civilization we enjoy today is not built on being nice. Being nice is what the 1960’s hippies were all about, the sexual revolution was all about, all those early symptoms of a failing civilization, they were all about being nice. Woke is now about being nice to minority freaks. The world will not improve by being nice, it will just get worse.

    #134415
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Observer said

    When species of warm-water tropical fish are regularly caught south of the subtropical convergence zone then something is wrong.

    Ahhhhh, get away from me satan. Why is it “wrong”? Who are you to decide that it is “wrong” simply because it is different to what happened when you were born. Who are you to say that the climate cannot change and super-adaptable humans should not use that adaptability to stick with mother nature rather than fighting against mother nature. Why do we have to start a war against mother nature just because of what you perceive to be “wrong”? The same hysterics happened over the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, fortunately we were unable to do anything to “fix” that problem, we had to leave it alone, and now the GBR is more successful than at anytime in living history.

    #134416
    WES
    Participant

    So US neocons are saying Russia has been greatly weakened by the war in the Ukrainian.

    Top US general says Russia is now stronger than before the war in the Ukraine started.

    If the US loses the war in the Ukraine, the US military’s budget will need to be doubled!

    Heads or Tails, how can the MIC possibly lose?

    #134417
    Dora
    Participant

    Thread with Ed Dowd.

    #134418
    Oroboros
    Participant

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