May 122023
 


Sophia Loren seated by the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis during filming for ‘Boy on a Dolphin’, 1957

 

Ukraine Needs ‘Bit More Time’ To Prepare For Counteroffensive – Zelensky (TASS)
Ukrainian Forces Begin “Shaping” Operations For Counteroffensive (RT)
UK Sending Long-range Storm Shadow Missiles To Ukraine (G.)
Russian MoD Denies Kinzhal Intercepted By Patriot Air Defense System (RIA)
West ‘Miscalculated’ With Economic War Against Russia – Spectator (TASS)
Donetsk Civilians Live In Constant Fear Of Ukrainian Shelling (Eva Bartlett)
European Security Order ‘Is No More’ – German President (RT)
Grain Deal Extended By 60 Days, Decision May Be Announced By Erdogan (TASS)
The UK’s Secret Control Of Palestinian Security Forces (Klarenberg)
US Sells Weapons To Majority Of Authoritarian Regimes – The Intercept (RT)
World’s Most Violent Country Claims Murder-Free Year (RT)
The Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know (Taibbi+)
Elon Musk Hires Ultra Woke Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter (CTH)
CNN Host Sues Trump For Assault And Defamation After Town Hall (BBee)

 

 

 

 

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2016

 

 

 

 

The Right Stuff

 

 

Dimon

 

 

Maria Zakharova : By digging a long investigation, we find that Von der Leyen’s family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany’s most prominent Nazis, but also some of Britain’s greatest slave traders.

 

 

 

 

“..those who are calling for peace talks to start as soon as possible could not force Ukraine to surrender its territories..”

Ukraine Needs ‘Bit More Time’ To Prepare For Counteroffensive – Zelensky (TASS)

The Ukrainian army needs a little bit more time to prepare for Kiev’s much-vaunted counteroffensive, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said in an interview with European media outlets, including the BBC, published on Thursday. “With [what we already have] we can go forward, and, I think, be successful. But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So, we need to wait. We still need a bit more time,” Zelensky said. As follows from Zelensky’s statement, those Ukrainian brigades formed especially for the counteroffensive are already fully ready to take part in combat operations, but the army still needs “certain things,” including armored vehicles, which are “arriving in batches.” The Ukrainian president also stated that those who are calling for peace talks to start as soon as possible could not force Ukraine to surrender its territories.


He noted that Kiev was not afraid of losing support from Washington after the next US presidential election in November 2024, because, according to Zelensky, both the Democrats and the Republicans are allies of Ukraine. The issue of a potential counterattack by the Ukrainian army has been discussed in the Ukrainian media for several months. A buildup of Ukrainian reserves was noted in the Zaporozhye area recently. Media reports have mooted various dates for the start of an attack, but the commencement of Kiev’s much-ballyhooed counteroffensive has been postponed several times already. Among the reasons the reports mentioned were the slow delivery of Western equipment, bad weather and huge losses suffered by Ukrainian troops in Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine).

Read more …

“Shaping involves striking targets such as weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems..”

Ukrainian Forces Begin “Shaping” Operations For Counteroffensive (RT)

Ukrainian forces have begun “shaping” operations in advance of a highly-anticipated counteroffensive against Russian forces, a senior US military official and senior Western official told CNN, Report informs. Shaping involves striking targets such as weapons depots, command centers and armor and artillery systems to prepare the battlefield for advancing forces. It’s a standard tactic made prior to major combined operations. When Ukraine launched a counteroffensive late last summer in the southern and northeastern parts of the country, it was similarly preceded by air attacks to shape the battlefield. These shaping operations could continue for many days before the bulk of any planned Ukrainian offensive, according to the senior US military official.


Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country still needs “a bit more time” before it launches the counteroffensive, in order to allow some more of the promised Western military aid to arrive in the country. “With [what we have] we can go forward and be successful,” Zelensky told European public service broadcasters in an interview published on Thursday. “But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable.” “So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time,” he said. Among the supplies Ukraine is still waiting for are armored vehicles — including tanks —which Zelensky said were “arriving in batches.” Shaping operations can also be designed to confuse the enemy.

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There are still Ukrainians alive. Can’t have that.

UK Sending Long-range Storm Shadow Missiles To Ukraine (G.)

Britain has become the first western country to provide Ukraine with the long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles that Kyiv wants to boost its chances in a much-anticipated counteroffensive, prompting a threat from the Kremlin of a military response. Hours after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he needed more western weapons to be confident of a victory this summer, Ben Wallace, the UK defence secretary, told MPs that the missiles – which cost more than £2m each – were “now going in, or are in the country itself”. The gift of the missiles was supported by the US, Wallace added, although previously Washington had declined to give Ukraine long-range missiles of its own, fearing that the outcome could escalate hostilities in the 15-month war.

Reflecting such concerns, the minister said the decision was “a calibrated and proportionate response” to the Russian invasion, and in particular Moscow’s repeated targeting of Ukrainian civilians. At least 23,000 civilians had been killed or injured, Wallace said. Russia had made “788 attacks on healthcare facilities, hospitals, clinics, medical centres”, and on many occasions killed civilians in missile strikes, he added. “The use of Storm Shadow will allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based within Ukrainian sovereign territory,” Wallace told MPs, adding: “Russia must recognise that their actions alone have led to such systems being provided.” Speaking at a press briefing in Moscow, the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia was taking a “rather negative” view of the UK’s move. “This will require an adequate response from our military, who … will make appropriate decisions,” he said.

Wallace did not say how many Storm Shadow missiles had been given to Ukraine, although it has been estimated the UK holds a stock of between 700 and 1,000. Working with four other countries, the UK issued a tender to buy more long-range “missiles or rockets with a range of 100-300km” (62 to 186 miles). Storm Shadow has a range of “in excess of 250km”, according to its manufacturer, the European arms group MBDA. That is significantly further than the high-precision US Himars rocket launchers currently used heavily by Ukraine, which rely on missiles with a range of 47 miles. Himars have become less effective as the Russian invaders have moved reserves of troops and equipment out of their range.

There have been concerns that the Storm Shadow missiles could be used to strike targets deep inside Russia’s internationally recognised borders. The White House has balked at supplying Ukraine with similar long-range ATACMS missiles, which can be fitted to the Himars systems. Wallace said the US was “incredibly supportive” of the UK’s decision, and said ATACMS missiles were not as suitable as Storm Shadow, which is designed to be able to strike defensive positions below ground.

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@BrianJBerletic
“This is clearly not a Russian Kinzhal missile which is a massive missile at 1.2 meters in diameter. Whatever this is, it is much smaller. Those claiming it is a BetAB-500 make a much more convincing argument…”

Russian MoD Denies Kinzhal Intercepted By Patriot Air Defense System (RIA)

The American Patriot anti-aircraft missile system could not shoot down the Russian Kinzhal missile due to its technical characteristics, a senior source in the Ministry of Defense said. “The fact is that the flight speed of the Kinzhal missile exceeds the maximum combat modes of anti-aircraft missile systems supplied by the West to the Kyiv regime, including the Patriot,” the agency’s interlocutor explained. In addition, as the source recalled, in the final phase of the flight, the Kinzhal performs an anti-missile maneuver and an almost vertical approach to the target, which excludes the possibility of it being intercepted by anti-aircraft missile systems. He called the statements about the downed hypersonic missile a hoax and stressed that it was “an attempt to wishful thinking. Earlier, the head of the press service of the Pentagon, Patrick Ryder, said at a briefing that Ukraine allegedly shot down a Russian Kinzhal missile with the help of the Patriot missile defense system transferred to it.

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“The West embarked on its sanctions war with an exaggerated sense of its own influence around the world..”

West ‘Miscalculated’ With Economic War Against Russia – Spectator (TASS)

Western countries have failed to achieve their goals with the economic war they unleashed on Russia following the onset of its special military operation in Ukraine, according to an editorial by the British Spectator weekly published on its website on Thursday. According to the magazine, the West quickly became aware that other countries were not ready to stop doing business with Russia, which rapidly redirected its oil and gas supplies to China and India. The bans introduced by the West have been surmounted with parallel imports. That said, the European economy is smarting from the consequences of its sudden rejection of Russian energy. The Spectator points out that the Russian economy was also hurt but not as seriously as Ukraine’s allies hoped.


“The West embarked on its sanctions war with an exaggerated sense of its own influence around the world. As we have discovered, non-western countries lack the will to impose sanctions on either Russia or on Russian oligarchs. The results of the miscalculation are there for all to see. <…> The Russian economy has not been destroyed; it has merely been reconfigured, reorientated to look eastwards and southwards rather than westwards,” the article says. The authors admit that in itself, the plan to declare the sanctions war on Russia “was not necessarily wrong” but point out that the West “is badly mistaken” if it continues to think that in the future, “it can fight wars purely by economic means, without bombs or bullets.”

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“..HIMARS systems were used, targeting “exclusively in the residential, central quarter of the city.”

Donetsk Civilians Live In Constant Fear Of Ukrainian Shelling (Eva Bartlett)

Heavy Ukrainian shelling of central Donetsk on April 28 killed nine civilians – including an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother – and injured at least 16 more. The victims were burned alive when the minibus they were in was hit by a shell. The attack also targeted a major hospital, apartment buildings, houses, parks, streets, and sidewalks. All civilian areas – not military targets. According to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) Representative Office in the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Co-ordination Center on Ukraine’s War Crimes), Kiev’s forces fired high-explosive fragmentation missiles “produced in Slovakia and transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries.” Regarding an earlier shelling on the same day, the JCCC noted that US-made HIMARS systems were used, targeting “exclusively in the residential, central quarter of the city.”

I was outside of Donetsk interviewing refugees from Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut) when both rounds of intense shelling occurred, the first starting just after 11am. I returned to see a catastrophic scene, with a burnt-out bus – still smoking – and some of its passengers’ charred bodies melted onto the frame. This tragic picture was sadly not a one-off event. Elsewhere, city workers were already removing debris and had begun repaving damaged sections of the roads. I’ve seen this following Ukrainian shelling many times, including on January 1 this year, when Ukraine fired 25 Grads into the city centre. Similarly, in July 2022, Ukrainian shelling downtown killed four civilians, including two in a vehicle likewise gutted by flames. When I arrived at the scene about an hour later, workers were repaving the affected section of the street.

The damage to the Republican Trauma Center hospital was quickly cleaned up, but videos shared on Telegram immediately after the shelling show a gaping hole in one of the walls. The room concerned contained what was, apparently, Donetsk’s sole MRI machine. Along Artyoma street, the central Donetsk boulevard targeted countless times by Ukrainian attacks, the destruction was evident: Two cars caught up in the bombing, residents of an apartment building boarding up shattered windows and doors, the all-too-familiar sound of glass and debris being swept away. In the residential area, the first to be targeted that day, in a massive crater behind one house, the walls and roof of another home were intermixed with rocket fragments.

Donbass

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And guess who we blame?

European Security Order ‘Is No More’ – German President (RT)

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has “destroyed” the security order in Europe, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has claimed. He argued that there would no return to former security principles even after the hostilities end. “The European security order is no more,” Steinmeier told Germany’s RBB radio broadcaster on Wednesday, adding that “common security” will cease to be a “common concept for a long time to come.” “We will find [ourselves] in a new situation [after the fighting ends], in which Europe on the one hand and Russia on the other hand will defend themselves against each other over the medium term,” the German president said. Steinmeier pinned the blame on Moscow for the erosion of European security, maintaining that neither the German government nor the EU was responsible.


The comments came one day after EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell asserted that the Ukraine conflict could be ended within days, should the flow of Western arms to Kiev cease. Borrell acknowledged, however, that such a scenario would not lead to the outcome Brussels was hoping for. Russia has repeatedly stated it is ready to resolve the conflict through peaceful means, as long as its goals are achieved and its interests are taken into account. Before the Russian military launched its campaign in Ukraine, Moscow tabled a comprehensive draft deal on security in Europe in 2021. The proposal involved a pledge by NATO not to expand further to the east, the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe, and the withdrawal of NATO troops and missiles away from the Russian border. The deal was rejected by both Washington and Brussels.

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Erdogan has elections this Sunday..

Grain Deal Extended By 60 Days, Decision May Be Announced By Erdogan (TASS)

The grain deal, which expires on May 18, will be extended by 60 days, the corresponding decision may be first to be announced by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, a source familiar with the negotiation process told TASS. “The deal, I think, will be extended for 60 days, but Russia may agree to this for the last time. The decision to prolong “traditionally” may be announced by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan after a telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart [Vladimir Putin],” the source said. The source did not rule out that the decision can be announced “today or tomorrow”. However, the source called the possibility of extending the deal a “gesture from Russia” in the hope that its demands, enshrined in the Istanbul memorandum of July 22 last year, would be taken into account.

Following the talks in Istanbul between the delegations of Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the UN, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin told reporters that the Russian part of the agreements would cease to operate if Moscow did not receive guarantees that their demands would be met by May 18. They concern the export of agricultural products and fertilizers, the reconnection of the Russian Agricultural Bank to the SWIFT system, and a number of other issues. Agreements to enable the export of food and fertilizers to world markets were signed on July 22, 2022 in Istanbul. They were originally meant to last 120 days and were extended for another 120 days in November. Russia announced on March 18 that the deal was extended for another 60 days, saying this would be enough time to assess the effectiveness of the memorandum signed with the UN.

Moscow has said repeatedly that any further extension of the deal hinges on whether the Russian part of the deal is implemented. The lack of progress in this issue jeopardizes the future of the entire initiative. On May 10-11 representatives of Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and the UN met in Istanbul to discuss a potential extension of the grain deal and the implementation of the Russian part of the agreement for supplies of grain and fertilizers. The security of the Black Sea grain corridor was also on the agenda.

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” It was in Northern Ireland that Britain perfected “five techniques” of psychological and physical torment, which formed the basis of modern torture worldwide..”

The UK’s Secret Control Of Palestinian Security Forces (Klarenberg)

From the UK Foreign Office’s perspective, steering the PA’s activities and composition ensures it not only remains “supportive of UK values and interests,” but also allows London’s domestic and foreign security and intelligence services to train an unblinking eye on residents of Gaza and the West Bank. As a result, potential threats of retaliatory violence arising from Tel Aviv’s brutal assaults in the Occupied Territories – both to Israel and Britain – can be neutralized via local actors. British infiltration of the Palestinian Authority is a long-running story, and its security infrastructure has always been a primary target. In 2004, the government of Tony Blair dispatched veteran senior British police officer Jonathan McIvor to assist the body.

The next year, he was employed by the European Union to establish the Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support (COPPS), Brussels’ first “security” mission in Palestine – which increases cooperation between the PA’s military, security, policing, and intelligence wings, and Israeli occupation forces – in advance of its formal launch in early 2006, and served for some time as its first chief. Questions can only abound as to whether McIvor’s high-level stint within the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a police force in Northern Ireland notorious for vicious discrimination against the province’s Catholic minority, and intensive collusion with loyalist terrorist groups, informed tactics employed today by the Palestinian Authority. It was in Northern Ireland that Britain perfected “five techniques” of psychological and physical torment, which formed the basis of modern torture worldwide, along with a strategy of “internment without trial” for terror suspects.

In 1976, a secret directive gave the Royal Ulster Constabulary free rein to employ these techniques whenever its officers wished, which endured well into the 1990s, concurrent with McIvor’s tenure with the force. The Palestinian Authority has been confirmed to widely engage in arbitrary arrests and torture of detainees, typically at Israel’s behest. Now that the PA is proving increasingly ineffective at quelling peaceful and armed resistance to both its brutal rule and Israeli ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories, the ‘expert’ guidance of Adam Smith International and other British government contractors has perhaps never been so urgently in need.

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No background checks…

US Sells Weapons To Majority Of Authoritarian Regimes – The Intercept (RT)

The administration of US President Joe Biden sold weapons to at least 57% of the world’s authoritarian regimes in 2022, according to analysis published on Thursday by The Intercept. In a lengthy review of US arms-dealing practices and recently released government data, the American publication noted that Washington has accounted for around 40% of global arms sales each year since the end of the Cold War. It added that, according to a classification system devised at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, the United States distributed weapons in 2022 to at least 48 of 84 (57%) countries described by the ‘Varieties of Democracy’ project as being under autocratic or authoritarian rule.

The Swedish study categorized global governments on a scale ranging from ‘closed autocracy’ to ‘liberal democracy’, principally using methodology to discern how free and fair a country’s elections might be. US weapons exports are typically divided into two categories: foreign military sales (FMS) and direct commercial sales (DCS). FMS requires the US government to act as a direct intermediary, with Washington buying the assets from a weapons manufacturer before it provides them to a foreign government. DCS deals, meanwhile, largely removes from the government’s intermediary role and permits manufacturers to sell directly abroad. Both types of sale require full approval from Washington. According to government data, the United States sold arms in FMS deals to 142 countries and territories last year, producing $85 billion in bilateral sales.

In Biden’s first full year as president, US weapons sales to foreign countries amounted to $206 billion – surpassing a Trump-era record of $192 billion. The US has been a key weapons supplier to Ukraine throughout its conflict with Russia. The Intercept noted, however, that this does not fully explain the boom in Washington’s arms export industry last year, as much of the weaponry was provided to Kiev in the form of grants. Russia’s offensive also began five months into the 2022 fiscal year. The findings of the analysis stand in contrast to Biden’s often-repeated stance of opposition to authoritarian governments. In a speech in Warsaw last year, the US president described conflict between democracy and autocracy as a battle “between liberty and repression” and “between a rules-based international order and one governed by brute force.”

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6,600 homicides in 2015. Zero the past year.

World’s Most Violent Country Claims Murder-Free Year (RT)

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador on Thursday announced an unprecedented homicide-free streak, adding up to 365 days since he took power nearly four years ago. The Latin American country was considered the world’s most violent as late as 2016. “We concluded May 10, 2023 with 0 homicides nationwide,” Bukele said on Twitter. “With this, it’s 365 days without homicides, a whole year.” The accompanying 90-second video called the development without precedent in El Salvador’s history. As of 2009, the country was considered the most violent in Latin America, with a killing every two hours. By 2015, it had over 6,600 homicides, the deadliest country in the world that wasn’t at war.

The homicide-free year was not consecutive, but rather cumulative over the four years of Bukele’s presidency. Before he took office in June 2019, the country had recorded only two days without a homicide in 15 years. Now El Salvador is “the most secure country in Latin America,” argued the president. “The country has never recorded such a cycle of peace, since its birth as a republic,” one Salvadoran social media influencer pointed out. Bukele has attributed the drastic change to his ‘War on Gangs’. His government declared a state of emergency in March 2022, amid a major spike in gang violence in the nation of 6.5 million on the Pacific Ocean. Designating the notorious Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Barrio 18 and other gangs as terrorists, his government has so far jailed over 65,000 suspected criminals.

A mega-prison called the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT), with the capacity to hold 40,000 convicts in maximum security, has been built outside the capital. Parallel to the crackdown on gangs, Bukele has embraced economic reforms, introducing Bitcoin as legal tender on par with the US dollar – over objections from the IMF – and abolishing all taxes and tariffs on the information technology sector. Visiting El Salvador in March, AP reported that ordinary Salvadorans were relieved and enjoying their daily lives without being terrorized by organized crime. But the agency also quoted US-based human rights experts who worried about El Salvador becoming a “police state.” Bukele’s government did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment.

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“..only America’s enemies are low enough, and deprived enough of real firepower, to require the use of such tactics..”

The Censorship-Industrial Complex: The Top 50 Organizations to Know (Taibbi+)

In 1996, just as the Internet was becoming part of daily life in America, the U.S. Army published “Field Manual 100-6,” which spoke of “an expanding information domain termed the Global Information Environment” that contains “information processes and systems that are beyond the direct influence of the military.” Military commanders needed to understand that “information dominance” in the “GIE” would henceforth be a crucial element for “operating effectively.” You’ll often see it implied that “information operations” are only practiced by America’s enemies, because only America’s enemies are low enough, and deprived enough of real firepower, to require the use of such tactics, needing as they do to “overcome military limitations.” We rarely hear about America’s own lengthy history with “active measures” and “information operations,” but popular media gives us space to read about the desperate tactics of the Asiatic enemy, perennially described as something like an incurable trans-continental golf cheat.

Indeed, part of the new mania surrounding “hybrid warfare” is the idea that while the American human being is accustomed to living in clear states of “war” or “peace,” the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian citizen is born into a state of constant conflict, where war is always ongoing, whether declared or not. In the face of such adversaries, America’s “open” information landscape is little more than military weakness. In March of 2017, in a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on hybrid war, chairman Mac Thornberry opened the session with ominous remarks, suggesting that in the wider context of history, an America built on constitutional principles of decentralized power might have been badly designed: Americans are used to thinking of a binary state of either war or peace. That is the way our organizations, doctrine, and approaches are geared. Other countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, use a wider array of centrally controlled, or at least centrally directed, instruments of national power and influence to achieve their objectives…

Whether it is contributing to foreign political parties, targeted assassinations of opponents, infiltrating non-uniformed personnel such as the little green men, traditional media and social media, influence operations, or cyber-connected activity, all of these tactics and more are used to advance their national interests and most often to damage American national interests… The historical records suggest that hybrid warfare in one form or another may well be the norm for human conflict, rather than the exception. Around that same time, i.e. shortly after the election of Donald Trump, it was becoming gospel among the future leaders of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” that interference by “malign foreign threat actors” and the vicissitudes of Western domestic politics must be linked. Everything, from John Podesta’s emails to Trump’s Rust Belt primary victories to Brexit, were to be understood first and foremost as hybrid war events.

This is why the Trump-Russia scandal in the United States will likely be remembered as a crucial moment in 21st-century history, even though the investigation superficially ended a non-story, fake news in itself. What the Mueller investigation didn’t accomplish in ousting Trump from office, it did accomplish in birthing a vast new public-private bureaucracy devoted to stopping “mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” while smoothing public acquiescence to the emergence of a spate of new government agencies with “information warfare” missions.

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Guess who was the Chair of the Ad Council that drove the partnership between global corporations and the US Government to push vaccines during COVID…

“And then I hired a WEF Executive Chair who worked with the White House and ‘government agencies’ on the COVID-19 ‘vaccination’ campaign to be the new CEO of ‘free-speech’ Twitter …”

Elon Musk Hires Ultra Woke Linda Yaccarino as CEO of Twitter (CTH)

Elon Musk has reportedly hired Linda Yaccarino as the CEO of Twitter. Unfortunately, this decision is the exact opposite of what everyone hoped about Musk’s intentions with the platform. Ms. Yaccarino is the head of NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships, and she is the tip of the spear in the creation of DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) indexing and corporate scoring. You might be familiar with ‘DEI’ as a result of the Bud Light woke advertising campaign to promote beer for transgenders. Well, that’s DEI in action, and Ms. Yaccarino is one of the pioneers in the advertising industry. Additionally, Linda Yaccarino is the Chairwoman of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Taskforce on Future of Work. As she noted in her position, “every CEO and executive needs to look inward, and build workplaces that ensure our employees, current and future, can always succeed amid rapid transformation.”

Overlaying the Diversity Equity and Inclusion mindset, you will note Yaccarino says, “long-term benefits for the unemployed, women, and communities of color.” Why would Elon Musk bring the most woke NBC advertising executive to become the CEO of Twitter? Obviously, he is focused on generating revenue, and Yaccarino can bring woke credentials to the platform luring corporate advertisers. Unfortunately, in order to achieve that objective, the platform content will have to be modified. That means the public square of Twitter needs to become a platform of non-controversial NPCs (Non Player Characters) which generally are identified in memes [SEE HERE]. The content on Twitter must fit an approved standard for advertising. Leading this effort to control platform content through the control of the monetization, is literally what Yaccarino has done in her work at NBCUniversal. Thus, her efforts to promote DEI take on a new level of importance.

Ms. Yaccarino also supports Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and follows him and his fellow influencers through her Twitter account. Politically this puts her in alignment with Elon Musk and the acceptable Republican group that promotes the Florida Governor. Keep in mind, for DeSantis, the “woke issues” are political tools to achieve an objective; nothing more. Ms. Yaccarino supporting Ron DeSantis is not a misnomer, it’s just politics. Similarly, for Elon Musk, it appears Ms. Yaccarino brings a greater financial value to the table offsetting any contradictions in his belief system about wokeism as a danger to speech and culture. Obviously, this hire says Musk is more concerned about revenue generation than actual free speech.

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“It was the most traumatizing experience of my life. It was assault, plain and simple. And defamation.”

CNN Host Sues Trump For Assault And Defamation After Town Hall (BBee)

A visibly shaken Kaitlan Collins announced she will be suing Trump for assault and defamation after being destroyed by the former President on national television last night. “He said things I didn’t agree with. Even worse, he said things I didn’t like,” said Collins in a statement. “It was the most traumatizing experience of my life. It was assault, plain and simple. And defamation. I’m suing Trump for $5 million like that other lady.” Sources also reported Trump called the CNN host a “nasty person,” which trusted fact-checkers have determined was false.


Media experts applauded the announcement and were all in agreement that Trump’s performance in the town hall was the most horrifying spectacle ever televised. “I am literally shaking right now,” said CNN Host Jake Tapper. “The lies, the misinformation, the pure evil of that monstrous orange man is too much for my soul to bear. Our democracy is in danger once again. God help us all.” Biden also responded to the town hall, saying: “Reflustrazuuure! Shut up, fat!” Within minutes of the announcement of the lawsuit, a New York judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff and ordered Trump to pay $5 million.

E Jean

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9 days before the Wright Brothers’ first flight.

 

 

Dog fight

 

 


Eudocima phalonia is also known as the common fruit-piercing moth, in its caterpillar stage it looks like a galaxy

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle May 12 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 40 total)
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  • #135051

    Sophia Loren seated by the Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis during filming for ‘Boy on a Dolphin’, 1957   • Ukraine Needs ‘Bit More Time’ To P
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 12 2023]

    #135052
    Red
    Participant

    Green? Yeah sure. Energy crunch? This shit is becoming comedic. Just doing a little pre nineties high school math and you’ll find this is a narrative of holes. All this “modelling” is leaving us just groping in the dark. A dark comedy!

    https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/opinion-alarming-drop-mining-derails-165525488.html

    The latest key Canadian and global mining production numbers are out, and they’re grim. The International Energy Agency says that to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, we need to be producing six times the current global output of mineral inputs just to build the turbines, transmission lines, batteries and other items essential for low-carbon energy infrastructure. Instead, we are mining less than we did in 2019. While policy-makers constrain new investments in fossil fuels, the raw materials we need in order to develop alternative forms of energy are not coming along quickly enough. The result seems likely to be an energy crunch.

    #135053
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Linda Yaccarino is the Chairwoman of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Taskforce on Future of Work.

    I guess this will give the Musk fanbois constipation. Remember, billionaires are not your friends, they want to so thoroughly enslave you that you are completely dependent on them and will live a life in squalor, experiencing billionaire-created pestilence and billionaire-created medical “help”, if you are lucky. Also remember, Trump is a billionaire, don’t trust a billionaire, but if their ego needs you, then try to use them.

    #135054
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “In order to keep up with the expansion of renewable energy production capacity, the United States will have to more than double the current size of the electric grid.”

    Or halve the population! I know which I’d choose. So does Deagle. If I kill half the population, we’ll divvy up their stuff between us, okay pal? Win-win.

    Speaking of killing half of life on earth: “UK Sends [long-range] Storm Shadow Long-Range Cruise Missiles To Ukraine

    They can be bunker missiles. If they even hit a Russian bunker, even one in Donbas which Russia considers legally annexed territory, that would be a “Let’s nuke London” moment. 250Km / 150 miles.

    So let’s repeat this from yesterday: “EU’s Borrell: Ukraine Would Collapse In Days Without West’s Military Supplies

    It’s London’s war. That’s the reason there are eggs in Kiev and kids are white with hunger in Blackpool while rape gangs roam the streets.

    Speaking of failed cities with unstoppable crime, “NY Mayor Adams Booted From Biden Surrogate Squad After Immigration Criticism

    Yup. Don’t care about your problems: “Do what You’re Told.” Adams is the minions, not the Party. ..Oh yeah, and somewhere out there people are dying by the thousands because of our s—t actions not enforcing the law, enforcing the #Opposite law, yawn, bored already.

    “Manhattan DA Bragg Strikes Again: Charges Marine Over Subway Chokehold Death”

    If somebody comes into the room, specifically says he’s going to kill everyone and doesn’t care, then takes actions to do so, I want you to know you are not allowed to defend yourself, mister. So go ahead and die or something, I don’t care.

    If only Neely had been carrying a semi-auto...the police still wouldn’t have cared and wouldn’t have stopped him. Clearly. They are letting such people free without bail 35 times citywide, including rape and domestic abuse. Beat your wife? The police will drive you to her house!

    This is the NYC that’s all butt-hurt about immigrants arriving. I guess immigrants are only welcome and allowed in Texas. Not in my backyard, we’re givin’ the “Martha’s Vineyard treatment.” Socialism is only cool when YOU pay ME. If I have to share my stuff instead, whoa, whoa, whoa, too far!

    “Pakistan May Lose Support From IMF – Risks Debt Default As Civil Unrest Continues”

    Continuing their attack on Pakistan. Killin’ some folks.

    “Two Youths Commit Suicide In Taxpayer-Funded Cross-Sex Hormone Study”

    Killin’ some folks. They’ll probably get a medal or something, since they were kids who died and all.

    “DHS Producing Videos Teaching Citizens How To Identify “Radicalized” Conservatives”

    A: Everyone. You can’t be too careful, so you should kill them just in case. You work your way up the Woke purity tree until there’s only you and me, and I’m not so sure about you. Remember the Joker’s plan? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vetKTtM7YyU Shoot the guy behind you. Who’s left at the end? Only the Joker. Because everyone thought THEY were the smart guy getting away with the crime on the OTHER guy.

    So this is prettymuch all social media (or mass media) since 1990 when they kicked off “The Plan”.

    CNN: I am also disturbed that CNN booked Trump but not Biden. That’s not fair at all, but also shows Biden is incapable of human speech or they would. Now the point of the CNN was to get the sound bites for CNN and the DNC to use this week, and they leaned heavily into almost exclusively his election fraud discussion, which doesn’t poll well. When they got those sound bites, then circled around, ignoring the next question they were on to get more, the found that live, he was doing very well in the audience and therefore cut the interview a shocking 20 minutes short.

    So election rigging at its finest, but as media isn’t required to be objective and never was since Jefferson called Adams a hermaphrodite, totally legal. I’m certain Trump knew, so each played their given hand.

    So anyway, if Trump wins, will he do nothing all over again? Be still my heart.

    Bill Gates Reactors. Hopefully less utter failure than either his software or his vaccine. But from way back, the only possible outcome to the Green Mass-Murder was to re-install nuclear widely. And probably without government oversight. So here we are, they “Suddenly realize.”

    “Kiev was not afraid of losing support from Washington after the next US presidential election in November 2024, because, according to Zelensky, both the Democrats and the Republicans are allies of Ukraine non-stop war and the Worldwide Secret State.”

    “Steinmeier pinned the blame on Moscow for the erosion of European security,”

    This is super-dumb. Any group with a lick of sense would work together uncaring of the enemy’s actions, so “they” cannot cause “you” security problems about working together. Only you can do that. …But maybe they forgot all 50 years from WWII to 1995. “Every statue pulled down, every history book re-written…” Like goldfish in the eternal Now.

    “” It was in Northern Ireland that Britain perfected “five techniques” of psychological and physical torment, which formed the basis of modern torture worldwide..”

    Their favorite. Killin’ some folks. Or torturing each and every child in this case. Yay! Well we couldn’t abort them, what ya gonna do? Let them grow up climbing trees and stuff? Brrrrr.

    widely engage in arbitrary arrests and torture of detainees,”

    Like Social Media, or in person here. The whole POINT is to hire and put in people who are dysfunctional, to make the most random decisions possible. Hell is the absence of #Logos, order, law, rules. So you wonder why the CIA gets into Bud and sinks the whole company in months? Or BuzzFeed and HuffPo are #AntiMoney, anti-surviving? Here you go. Their god is #AntiLogos, anti Logic. Random. That is hell, and they want it planetwide, in your town, but better, right inside your house and inside your mind.

    Tell the Truth.

    “The administration of US President Joe Biden sold weapons to at least 57% of the world’s authoritarian regimes in 2022,”

    And GAVE $6B in hard weapons to known terrorists FOR FREE, as well as leaving 300,000 assault weapons to known murderers. In Afghanistan. That’s just ONE incident. As ZZ Top said, “I’m going worldwide”.

    “6,600 homicides in 2015. Zero the past year.”

    You mean putting violent murderers in jail can stop them from murdering again? We should look into this.

    “Insane Woman” She’s an artist, Calm down. I’d hope we can all be a lot more eccentric than this. …So long as we don’t perjure ourselves for amusement.

    #135055
    aspnaz
    Participant

    This is the TOTALLY INSANE woman who made unfounded accusations against Trump the NY court believed.

    She’s insane. She’s a Democrat. That’s a tautology.

    So, the Democrats found a poor artist, paid her big bucks to claim she had been molested by Trump. Totally unrealistic, why would a billionaire not just scrape the bottom of the barrel, but molest a woman with red hair (possibly a wig)? We all know that the women with unnatural hair colours are mental as fuck, so why would Trump molest that when he has a completely different class of women in his history? Was Trump drugged to molest her? NO, the other insane, the Democrats, herded into the court to judge the man they hate, they decided that he was guilty to the max, except that the “max”, which was rape without a shred of evidence, got thrown out on technicalities. Democrats are so weak, the men are so feminized, they are so easy to manipulate, it is rather sad.

    #135056
    EoinW
    Participant

    It isn’t just the looney Left that virtue signals. Why do Americans have guns? Is it to protect their freedoms when government lockdowns arrive? Is it to oppose election fraud? Twice! Is it to stop the invasion of illegal aliens?

    No the reason Americans have guns is so they can tell everyone else they have guns. See how special we are, we have guns! Virtue signaling.

    Which is basically the sole value of voting for Trump. Won’t change anything. Won’t fix anything. But it’s giving the globalists the finger and that feels good. Yes virtue signaling feels good. That why everyone does it. I’m doing it now, with this post.

    To be fair, it doesn’t matter what individuals do at this point. We’re in the early stages of a civilisation collapse and it’s too late to stop that momentum. Hittitie Empire here we come!

    Yes that sounds like overkill. Yet with the people in power doubling down to destroy everything, is it really beyond the realm of possibilities? All the native cultures of two continents were practically wiped out a few centuries ago. That all began with a handful of settlers/soldiers.

    Or another way of looking at it is to consider this tattoo fetish which has swept western society in the last 2 decades. The Picts were known for their tattoos. Where are the Picts today?

    My advice to any person who wants to live in a white/christian society, or simply a society that still has law and order: Learn Russian then immigrate!

    #135059
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks to Rototillerman for this Carbon-14 computer dating that shows man-made CO2 at 12% cumulative, not enough to cause glbal warming. https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/Abstract/2022/02000/World_Atmospheric_CO2,_Its_14C_Specific_Activity,.2.aspx

    Thanks to Observer for this detailed and definitive “cmment” (rebuttal) from the same journal. https://journals.lww.com/health-physics/Citation/2022/06000/Comment_on__World_Atmospheric_CO2,_Its_14C.13.aspx

    The rebuttal wins hands down. Same stand-off. Back to your positions…

    #135060
    aspnaz
    Participant

    This might be the single funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

    Anderson the feminized Democrat thingy. What a total piece of shit, pretending he cares, but realising that his viewers tuned in to watch Trump being demolished and now they will vote for Trump. This is Anderson fighting for his career, his fre CNN tampons.

    Man, this reminds me of the financial companies, the kids today don’t care whether the system works correctly, whether the client is given the right numbers, they don’t care because they have never been given any goals, they have just been given the solution, same as Gates was given DOS from him Mum at IBM, Rupert Murdoch was given News International by his dad – sorry don’t know the name, don’t care, won’t search online for it – and all the rest of the inheritance elite. The inheritance elite just wanted someone to say “jees boss, yousse great” and now that is all the kids can do, kiss ass and create nothing but kiss the boss’s ass.

    Seen it today, a Chinese CCP client of a government financial organisation in HK filed a complaint because reports from the HK financial organisation contained duplicate rows. No doubt the Shanghai guys want to know whether they are being double charged, but all that happens at the HK end is that they all turn to politics – the art of covering your ass – and just nobody is interested in fixing the problem. Weird. When I started work it was not like this, you had to make stuff or be fired. Now, kissing ass is enough, making stuff is seen as irrelevant.

    #135061
    John Day
    Participant

    The very nice photograph of Sophia Loren sitting at the Acropolis, while filming “Boy On A Dolphin” makes me think of “Porpoise Mouth” by Country Joe and The Fish. 🙂

    #135062
    John Day
    Participant

    E Jean is pretty fit at 75; walks around in the forest 3 hours per day, paints trees and rocks blue, has big blue polka-dots on her grey Prius with New York plates, looks sort of like Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, but with Raggedy Ann colored hair.
    She should probably run for president.

    #135063
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Dr D said

    Bill Gates Reactors. Hopefully less utter failure than either his software or his vaccine. But from way back, the only possible outcome to the Green Mass-Murder was to re-install nuclear widely. And probably without government oversight. So here we are, they “Suddenly realize.”

    Enjoying life before the imminent days when we get Bill Gates nuclear reactor waste washing up on our beaches. Why has Bill Gates taken the role of being stinkiest shit in the world? Is this a dick-size competition for him, now he has lost his “only-girl-I-ever-knew” wife? His fathe rwas a Fed director, his mother was an IBM director – hence his magical ability to buy DOS from IBM. You have to wonder how much damage an asocial geek can do to the world: they see all technology as good and all nature as “in the way”, they want you to be their lab rat.

    #135064
    zerosum
    Participant

    Count your blessings

    We’re in the early stages of a civilization collapse and it’s too late to stop that momentum.

    1. Depopulation (not You)
    2. Centralized Destruction of war machines (in Ukraine)
    3. Cities turned to rubble (not Your city)
    4. Major movement of refugees. (not You)
    5. Major food insecurity (not You)
    6. Weather extremes destroying infrastructures (not You)
    7. bad health (not You)
    ———-

    #135065
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Prepping for the great reset – more like the great cockup – with my wife making another huge jar of marmite from my brewing yeast. You got to have marmite to live. We use the brewing yeast to make bread, also to make the next batch of bread, also to make marmite. I feel that I am taking advantage of these little yeast critters, like a billionaire would with the plebs.

    We need is a cow, but keeping a cow in Hong Kong is a problem, and – of course – so is keeping chickens. Yes, the HK government decided to ban domestic chickens some time back, totally stupid-government decision, but I am sure some shit got a payrise as a result. But, we have a source for chickens killed today, so we can survive while that lasts.

    We also need peanuts – peanut butter – but that is difficult although we can get 25kg sacks of peanuts delivered to the door within two days, so maybe we can survive that (We can also get the same of coffee beans) Yes, the Australians sell everything, including peanuts, steak, coal, ore etc to China while telling the Aussie citizens that China are bad people. Crazy, but that is the west these days, its all about being virtue signallers, nothing about building or creating, all about living off the inheritance that the whole generation seems to have received.

    Inheritance rich people are stupid people.

    #135066
    aspnaz
    Participant

    zerosum said

    We’re in the early stages of a civilization collapse and it’s too late to stop that momentum.

    Inheritance, from parents and society, appears to be the main factor in destroying civilisation. A large percentage of the population receives money from their parents and government and decides to spend their life spending that money and doing nothing to create their own legacy. As people get richer, all it takes is a shock like Covid to persuade people to give up work and live off Daddy’s inheritance. They will leave nothing to their kids, but their thinking has gone beyond their kids. When people learn that they no longer have to work, then civilisation collapses because they then spend their time promoting woke.

    #135067
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “Von der Leyen’s family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany’s most prominent Nazis, but also some of Britain’s greatest slave traders.”

    Hang the Nazi bitch with her midget gigolo

    .

    #135068
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    The hardest part of coming to terms with the fact that we are (as conscious, aware, immortal souls) involved in a game of some sort, is that games ( ALL games) are by their very nature a part of, and nested into, more fundamental games. In other words, a game within a game within a game, ad infinitum

    To paraphrase the immortal wisdom of the Bernie laPlante, just find the level of bullshit that you’re comfortable with, and go with that.

    My game has always been to figure out the game that I’m in.

    #135069
    Oroboros
    Participant

    M Reid from yesterday posted an article about ‘why corporations are committing suicide’ with woketurdness.

    How can they sustain the monetary losses?

    Well, Disney & the Piss Queer Beer’s of the Empire of Lies are pure psyop at this point and simply get a backdoor bailout from the Deepshit State.

    So boycotts don’t work, the offending corporations will just keep trucking and the little people will eat the losses

    .

    #135070
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #135072
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @Oroboros

    Thank you for the great T-Shirt mem/photo. First belly laugh of the day. I want that shirt so bad I might actually go find some vendor to sell me one (my daughter’s birthday approaches and she would KILL to own and wear that shirt.)

    #135073
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Humor rules!

    #135074
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “Joe Biden could go to jail and The New York Times wouldn’t tell anybody he was no longer president.” — Peter A. Golden

    Hahahahaha!

    BIDEN: “All the kids under the age of 15, come on up here.”

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1656792060803022849

    #135075
    jb-hb
    Participant

    It’s Official: Top NBCUni Ad Exec And World Economic Forum Taskforce Chair Is Twitter’s New CEO

    Linda Yaccarino: Penn State, NBC, WEF, DIE (please stop calling it DEI, it’s DIE), NotaVax pusher. Couldn’t find any prior experience being a CEO.

    Geez why not just put Alissa Heinerscheid in there – I hear she might be looking for a new job after her paid vacation is done. And she did great as Marketing VP for a worldwide brand with no prior experience at that level.

    I found plenty of stuff online of Yaccarino trumpeting success with the NBC Peacock streaming service.

    Ah yes. The NBC streaming service whose flagship mass appeal show, the one that was going to bring in subscriptions — in the same way Star Wars and Marvel was going to make Disney+ a huge success — was Star Trek STD.

    Star Trek STD – the show that cost a gagillion dollars to make with a viewership LOWER THAN reruns of Celebrity Family Feud. A show with not only a livid hate for Star Trek, but for human cognition.

    On NBC Peacock Streaming – which boasts of having 20 million subscribers as its huge success. Streaming services always boast of having “subscribers” whenever they get bundled into things like existing cable plans, the standard unlimited rate plans for wireless service providers, etc. They’re bundled for free with Comcast – are there ANY other “subscribers”??? And she’s cited everywhere as a brave-n-stoooning pioneer of “Radical Transformation” …bootstrapping off a failed streaming service that had to keep getting folded into other platforms to try (desperately, not at all impressively) to get SOMETHING out of it.

    Anyway, all the Elon/Twitter stuff was a good LARP. Got people to imagine what things COULD be like if everything really opened up – if we could actually discuss and solve problems. A hazy mirage, the details resolving slightly, of a better way for things to be. The whole thing with Tucker makes a whole lot more sense now. The timing makes it obvious – a Lucy/football bit. Golf clap.

    #135076

    I am a Star Trek fan and haven’t heard of Star Trek Sexually Transmitted Disease.
    Must have been great. Sorry I missed it.

    #135077
    jb-hb
    Participant

    STD was truly awful. There’s also

    Star Trek Picard, which was a miserable, depressing, anti-narrative, anti-star trek dumpster fire

    Star Trek Strange New Worlds – imagine if people that hate Star Trek tried to make the Star Trek equivalent of the recent Budweiser “Recovery” (They Think We Are Really Stupid) ad

    Star Trek Lower Decks – an attempt to make a Star Trek Rick & Morty but Woke and absent of intelligence or real humor.

    At least Dr Who just had ONE ruining show – Secret Hideout/Bad Robot/Bad Reboot had to just keep churning out more and more. They have many others lined up and/or proposed.

    #135080
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Lee Slusher: Post-WWII Order Collapsing, World Moving Toward Multipolarity, Elites Seek Control


    Security Expert Lee Slusher discusses the state of Pax Americana and how the post-WWII status quo is failing. The West’s foray into Ukraine is a fool’s errand and it’s likely we’ve reached peak NATO and EU. He analyzes the recent Prigozhin incident and evaluates Russian power. Lee lived and worked in Taiwan and believes the U.S. no longer has the capability to defend Taiwan. He feels countries are making concrete steps toward multipolarity. We also discuss the destabilization of Hungary, the U.S.-Mexico border crisis, the global elite, and how the goal on all fronts is control.

    Lee Slusher: Post-WWII Order Collapsing, World Moving Toward Multipolarity, Elites Seek Control

    #135081
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    ” Spartacus here for a ninth Spartacast. ”

    https://iceni.substack.com/p/spartacast-09#details

    #135082
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    That is a false attribution.

    Skinny: UK newspaper article wrongly attributed to Bill Gates

    Bill is a creepy lunatic and another billionaire run morally amok but he is not Dr. Doom. No wonder only a minority takes alt-news seriously.

    I forget: is it the Vatican or the Elders of Zion who are bent on world domination/already have it under their opposable thumb?

    Oversung to the indulgent max in a pretentious arrangement, but he was young and he had an amazing voice:

    4 ur luv

    #135084
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    As for Musk’s new CEO: we hired Werner von Braun to make rockets despite his running a former Nazi slave labor operation. Point being that if a person will prostitute their self one way for $$, they’ll probably prostitute themselves the other way.

    I have no faith invested in Elon as a benevolent influence but he has proven to be a very savvy player. There’s no future in wokesterism, so I tend to look at this new CEO with an open mind. Not that I read Twitter.

    “Twitter” as the de facto # 1 USA opinion-shaper: talk about a sigh of the times.

    #135085
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Before he ruled Ukraine, young Zelensky ruled the Toads of the Short Forest:

    #135086
    jb-hb
    Participant

    UK newspaper article wrongly attributed to Bill Gates
    “False. Gates did not write this article. “

    “bill gates has been working on vaccines and depopulation for a long time, has a record of using specific vaccines in specific instances to do exactly that, there’s early instances of proof of that”

    “FOOL, BILL GATES DOES NOT WRITE NEWSPAPER ARTICLES!!! DEBUNKED!!!!”

    #135087
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    Blackrock is taking over

    #135088
    John Day
    Participant

    “Invisible Wars” is up https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/invisible-wars

    ​ ​Anticipating the societal ultrashock​ ​We really are at war, and internalising the full consequences of that is hard​. Martin Geddes
    ​The societal divide is between those who acknowledge we have lived under conditions of deception, and are seeking truth (even if reluctantly), and those who cling on to ignorance, so they do not face the pain of change. At some point this chasm will collapse, and reality will forcefully intrude. Part of the agony of (partially) knowing what is going on is the anticipation of the hurt to come for those we love, but who carelessly went along with the collective psychosis. Regardless of the scale of the actual or attempted murder of the masses, there is a psychological ‘ultrashock’ to confront, which is itself dangerous if not sufficiently contained.
    ​ ​One observation is that many people I consider awake end up in quite a depressed state, and become “black pilled”. They forget the paradoxical nature of the art of war, where things look bleak when they are actually rosy, but at a deeper strategic level. They lose their faith in actors and actions unseen by forces for good who will stop at nothing to protect the innocent. The mind engages with the perceived reality, but the spirit lacks faith, and the end result is dispiriting and demoralising. I can now see why this is called spiritual warfare, and not critical thinking warfare. The spirit is what truly drives the outcome; everything reconciles in the end, and if it isn’t reconciled, it isn’t the end.
    ​ ​It is the essential nature of fifth generation warfare that the conflict hide itself from its victims. The ubiquitous recognition that there is a war going on defines the end of the conflict, because the targets no longer acquiesce with the plans of the perpetrators. While mind control may misdirect people into acting against their own interest in the short run, “spirit control” is what makes them seek untruth and unrighteousness in the long run. It is easy to focus on the misdeeds of police, courts, councils, doctors, educations, etc. — but the pastors, priests, and prelates carry the greatest burden of shame for misdirecting their flocks.
    https://newsletter.martingeddes.com/p/anticipating-the-societal-ultrashock

    ​Michael Hudson has an interview out. Thanks Christine. I’ll excerpt it sparsely:
    ​Hudson: I’ve described in a number of my books how I was working for Chase Manhattan in 1967.
    A former State Department person came to me and gave me a document explaining that the United States wanted to become the new offshore banking center, the new flight capital center, saying that, well, what if America could become the Switzerland?
    They asked me to calculate how much the United States could get if it provided safety to the world drug dealers, to the world’s criminals, to the world tax avoiders, to the world dictators.
    They said, — If we can have the United States set up banks offshore in the Caribbean and other countries, then we can have Chase Manhattan and other banks set up offices in these countries to take the deposits, and then they will take these deposits and they will send them to the head office.
    — And that is how we’re going to finance the Vietnam War and foreign military spending.//
    ​..​And there was a book by Tom Naylor of Canada called Hot Money, where he describes exactly how it was the United States that sent up the offshore banking centers, making America to be the safe haven for criminals throughout the world.
    ​ ​And Paul Krugman says, this is what’s saving the dollar. Criminals are us. If we can attract all the criminal capital to the United States, there’s so much crime that we support by supporting our dictators and calling them democrats, that we can stabilize the dollar by criminalizing the entire dollarized economy…
    ​..​For instance, the Americans report the trade deficit of oil, huge trade deficit. And yet most oil is imported from U.S. firms.
    ​ ​And yes, it pays a lot for the oil, but very little of this payment for oil is paid in foreign currency, because the firms remit their profits to the United States.
    They buy the imported capital goods that they need in the United States. They pay U.S. management in the United States.
    ​ ​I’ve written a monograph on distinguishing the financial flows of the balance of payments from the GDP approach as if all of these things were monetary.
    So Krugman deliberately leaves out the fact that America makes an enormous amount of money on capital account.
    ​ ​For instance, the fact that most of the global majorities’ foreign debts are in dollars, not their own currency.
    This is why the IMF forces them to depreciate their currency and impose a chronic hyperinflation on Latin American and African debtor countries.
    ​ ​It’s because if you look at the capital account, including the enormous inflow of the world’s criminal capital through the offshore banking centers, then you’re going to understand that the balance of payment is something utterly different than the fictitious picture that Mr. Krugman states.
    ​ ​And you can look very simply. You can look at the Treasury Bulletin, and you can look at U.S. liabilities to foreigners.
    ​ ​Look at U.S. liabilities to their own branches in the Caribbean countries and the other offshore banking centers, and you’ll see an enormous inflow of foreign currency from these offshore banking centers into the dollar accounts of the head offices of these banks.​..​
    ​..​Currency values are not determined by trade.​​They’re determined by capital investment, by debt service especially, and by capital flight and crime.
    ​ ​And if you don’t realize that capital flight, crime, warfare is the key to the balance of payments, but only goods and services, then you’re under the same illusion that Krugman is in in the American economy, that the financial sector is all about banks lending money to factories to pay workers to produce the goods and services that they buy, leaving out the stock market, the bond market, the real estate market, the commercial banking system, the private capital, and everything else that is a blank area to Mr. Krugman.

    NY Times Is Wrong on Dedollarization: Economist Michael Hudson Debunks Paul Krugman’s Dollar Defense

    ​ Hudson/Desai discussion: De-Dollarization Is About More Than Just Currencies
    MICHAEL HUDSON: One thing about this, the Federal Reserve, by doing the quantitative easing, has painted itself into a corner…
    ​..​And so the Federal Reserve has a problem. And it seems to have just discovered this now, that if you have a zero interest rate, then people are going to buy stocks and bonds.
    ​ ​And one of the reasons that the dollar has remained strong is that the American stock market has gone up so fast and compared to other markets, including Japan and Europe, that foreign investors, the billionaires all over the world, are putting their money into riding the stock market rise.
    ​ ​But if the Federal Reserve now decides, wages are beginning to go up and we’ve got to ​[raise interest rates to] ​create unemployment and bring on a depression so that we can lower the wages and make even bigger profits, then you’re going to have the banking system here and in Europe going insolvent. And that’s what you’re seeing right now.
    ​ ​So the system has reached an insolvable crisis. It’s not a problem. It’s a quandary. There’s nothing the Federal Reserve can do. And the whole dollarized system is breaking right now in the United States. It’s paralyzed.
    ​MICHAEL HUDSON: Argentina’s debt cannot be paid. Zambia’s debt cannot be paid. Sri Lanka’s debt cannot be paid. And the American debt cannot be paid.
    So what’s broken is not simply the dollar as a political currency, that it can grab your money; the whole financial system in the West has reached its limit. The debts can’t be paid. And the question is, how are they going to be paid? …
    RADHIKA DESAI: Now you can have as full a picture as we can draw of the mounting contradictions of the dollar system. So the dollar system is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. On the other hand, alternatives are emerging.
    ​ ​And we’ve talked off and on about the various alternatives, bilateral arrangements between different countries to trade in their own currencies, multilateral arrangements like the Chiang Mai Initiative, the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement, the New Development Bank, the [BRICS] Contingency Reserve Agreement, the creation of new payment systems like the MIR systems and the SIP systems of Russia and China, respectively.​..​
    ​ ..So as these things multiply, what is increasingly going to happen is that the dollar and its value will matter to an ever-narrowing circle of primarily US-based dollar holders. So that’s where we are at.
    ​ ​And in this context, what we then have is the possibility that the rest of the world will fashion a completely new financial system.​..
    ​MICHAEL HUDSON: That’s the whole point. It’s not a de-dollarization as such. It’s a de-neoliberalization.​..​
    ​..​So the solution is obviously going to be: you create an artificial currency. We’ve said before, it’s like paper gold, except it’s not gold.
    ​ ​It’s something that will be politically defined by the member countries as something like Keynes’s bancor or a kind of credit that can only be used among central banks, among governments for their own purpose. And this is what the United States is really afraid of.​..
    ​..The problem is for other countries to create an alternative. And to create an alternative, you need to have an ideology.
    ​ ​You need to have an idea of: What is an economic system? How does the world economy work in a way that is going to benefit us and be mutually beneficial without being centered on any particular economy benefiting at the expense of the others by just printing its currency as a free lunch?​ . …
    ..RADHIKA DESAI:​ ​So as Michael pointed out, the way to think about what will replace the dollar system, one of the best ways to think about it is to think about the principles underlying Keynes’s proposals for bancor and the International Currency Union (ICU), which is why we discussed it at some length in a previous episode.​..
    ​…The US government essentially acts as the representative of big private corporations. It is their power that it seeks to advance.
    ​ ​Whereas if you accepted the principles of bancor and the International Currency Union, the idea is not to add to the power of big private corporations, including big financial corporations, but on the contrary, to underline the fact that economies are supposed to be run to focus on production, productivity, and the creation of a broad-based prosperity, full employment, et cetera, which is exactly the opposite of what the US wants to do.
    ​ ​So the United States’ pursuit of the interests of big corporations is not served by agreeing to such a system. So we will not see that.
    ​ ​But we will see regional equivalence of that, partial equivalence of that, and the principles involving the bancor system are very important. One of the first ones is, the whole issue of balanced economic growth and investment and trade versus imbalance.​..
    MICHAEL HUDSN: You have to maintain some way of keeping economies solvent, and under finance capitalism, under any financialized system, the tendency is for the financial sector to take over the real economy and the only solution, Keynes said, is to wipe out the debts that are built up by the financial creditors.
    ​ ​You wipe out the debts and at the same time the creditors’ claims on others, and that’s what the bancor systems did, and that’s why the United States rejected this claim in 1945, because they said, — Well, wait a minute, over the next five years, by 1950, we’re going to increase our holdings of gold, as indeed they did. — We’re going to increase other countries’ debt, of England and Europe, as indeed it did. — We don’t want to wipe it out. We want to use this to consolidate our power. That’s what our power is.​..
    ​RADHIKA DESAI: ​..​I would say that Keynes, of course, knew that imbalances could not be entirely wiped out. But what he did was he ensured that imbalances would not persist. There would not be persisting imbalances.​..​
    ​..​He proposed to correct that, essentially, by focusing on the productive economy. It was not merely a financial correction.
    ​ ​He basically created incentives for countries that were accumulating surpluses. Remember also that one of the key principles of Keynes’s system was that adjustment should not be imposed only on the debtor and deficit countries, but also on the surplus and creditor countries, so that [both countries are always involved].​..​
    ​ ..The fact is, if you had a bancor, this would mean that if China becomes a major investor in the major economy, yes, it can continue to develop, to build up credits, but at a certain point, the accumulation of Chinese financial claims on other countries, namely other countries’ debt to China, will simply be wiped out.
    ​ ​And Keynes had a mechanism to wipe this out after a given number of years.​..
    ​..And key, another very important principle of this for Keynes, I think it was practically sacrosanct, was the institution of capital controls or what we call capital account management.
    ​ ​Because without capital controls, the type of productive economy that Michael is referring to, and that we both believe should really be what all countries strive for, is not possible.
    I​f you allow the rich people of your country to take money in and out of your country whenever they like, you are tying yourself to a form of economic management, which is the opposite of economic management for productive expansion, for egalitarian economies, and so on and so forth.​..
    ​..​I always get so intrigued that people don’t get things. Every other day you will read a story saying, — Oh, the yuan will never replace the dollar because it will never be internationalized like the dollar.
    ​ ​Well, you’re darn right it won’t be internationalized like the dollar, and it should not be. Because if it were internationalized like the dollar, the Chinese productive economy would suffer the fate of the American productive economy, which is essentially going down the drain.
    ​ ​So internationalization of the yuan will proceed, but on very different principles.​..
    MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, changing a financial system requires changing the whole economic system. And if the purpose we’ve been discussing is: How are you going to make the countries that today are indebted, the Global South countries, how are you going to enable them to get to the future?
    ​ ​Well, there’s only one way that you can have them revive, and that is to create a mixed economy. Government is going to have to play a major role in reviving these economies through government infrastructure.
    ​ ​The key is that basic natural monopolies, transportation, communications, health care cannot be financialized. They’re going to be done by the government. That is the reason. That is how China has been able to make the amazing gains that it’s made over the last 30 to 40 years.​..​
    ​..​Well, you’re going to have to have government taking a lead. This is why the United States is fighting so viciously to prevent this from happening. It’s not simply preventing an alternative to the dollar as a currency. It’s preventing the financial system from being outmoded and replaced by a mixed public-private economy.​..
    ​..In the last few days, you’ve had the Korean president meet with President Biden, who said, — We want to make sure that you are not going to sell computer chips to China. We are trying to prevent China from having technology.
    ​ ​That’s how the dollar system works. The dollar system is based on concentrating all natural monopolies in the United States, the monopoly of ownership of oil and gas reserves, the monopoly of computer technology, the information technology, pharmaceutical and health technology.
    ​ ​The dollar system is really a concentration of monopoly rents in the United States dollars, which is supposed to create a huge increase in the stock market value of Amazon and Google.​..
    ​..You can’t understand the financial system of dependency without understanding the trade dependency that America has tried to create for oil and gas, for food exports, blocking Russia, for technology exports.
    ​ ​T​​his is the whole system that has to be taken on.
    ​https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/04/29/de-dollarization-neoliberalism-radhika-desai-michael-hudson/

    #135089
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ ​Janet Yellen delivered some great news today​…​
    ​ ​“If Congress fails to do that, it really impairs our credit rating. We have to default on some obligation, whether it’s Treasuries or payments to Social Security recipients,” Yellen said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “That’s something America hasn’t done since 1789. And we shouldn’t start now. So we’ve not discussed what to do.”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yellen-we-have-default-something-if-no-debt-ceiling-deal

    ​ ​Congress Leaves Town With No Debt Deal As Biden, McCarthy Postpone Meeting
    ​ ​According to Trump, while he doesn’t think a default is likely, “it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” adding that the effects of a default might not be as disastrous as everyone expects, suggesting “it’s really psychological more than anything else,” and adding “maybe it’s, you have a bad week or a bad day.”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/congress-leaves-town-no-debt-deal-biden-mccarthy-postpone-meeting

    ​ Moon of Alabama (Germany): ​Ukraine SitRep: Delayed Counteroffensive, Russian Defense Lines, Weapon Efficiency
    [Once again pointing out that US/NATO is merely renting a narrative of Ukraine predominating, at the very high cost of Ukrainian lives, civilian lives in Donetsk and Luhansk, and the deep depletion and exhaustion of expensive western weapons systems, in lots of small batches, being used by inexperienced new Ukrainian recruits.]
    Two weeks ago the Biden administration had recognized that the announced Ukrainian ‘counteroffensive’ will fail to make much progress.
    The operation has still not started and Zelensky has moved its launch further into the future.
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/05/ukraine-sitrep-delayed-counteroffensive-russian-defense-lines-weapon-efficiency.html#more

    Christine sends this speculation by Gilbert Doctorow.
    UK Shipment of Long Range Cruise Missiles to Ukraine Radically Changes the Conflict​
    ​First you had Boris Johnson, who ruined the nearly agreed peace accord between Russia and Ukraine back in March 2022. Boris threatened to put a stop to Western assistance to Kiev if Zalensky took the draft treaty through to signature. Zelensky then backed out of the negotiations and went all out for war.
    ​ ​Now we have Prime Minister Sunak sending long range cruise missiles to Ukraine supposedly to help them succeed with their counteroffensive and recapture lost territory from the Russians. The missiles are to be fitted onto existing Ukrainian Soviet era jets and have a 250 km range. This will theoretically enable Ukrainian forces based in Kharkov or Zaporozhie to deliver highly destructive warheads to anywhere in Crimea, for example.​..
    ​..​I can easily imagine the popular reaction in Russia of a Ukrainian rocket attack on Sevastopol that killed, say 400 civilians. There would be a great public uproar and it is hard to see how the Kremlin could avoid responding with its own devastating counter blow. But counter blow against whom? Against the Ukrainians or against those truly responsible for the atrocity, namely the British? Here is where the current strong dislike for “Anglo-Saxons” in Russia may come into play. It comes on top of the recent Russian outrage over delivery of depleted uranium artillery shells to Ukraine by Britain.
    ​ ​In effect, by delivering these weapons to Ukraine Britain is wrecking the hitherto generally accepted notion that the war between Russia and Ukraine will be decided on the battlefield. That is precisely how the EU’s foreign policy and security chief Borrell put it more than half a year ago. Instead the outcome in Ukraine may now be decided by a war between Russia and Britain. This is a war that Britain is as likely to lose as the ongoing war being fought by Ukraine. And what comes after that? A full NATO-Russia war? A nuclear war?​ [Hey, what if Russia sells carrier-killer hypersonic missiles to Iran and North Korea, or Argentina?]​
    UK Shipment of Long Range Cruise Missiles to Ukraine Radically Changes the Conflict

    As Donetsk civilians live in constant fear of Ukrainian shelling, a reporter on the ground details the terror​ , Eva Bartlett​
    Documenting Kiev’s attacks on residential areas is becoming a horrible, tragic routine
    ​ ​I was outside of Donetsk interviewing refugees from Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut) when both rounds of intense shelling occurred, the first starting just after 11am. I returned to see a catastrophic scene, with a burnt-out bus – still smoking – and some of its passengers’ charred bodies melted onto the frame. This tragic picture was sadly not a one-off event.
    ​ ​The attack also targeted a major hospital, apartment buildings, houses, parks, streets, and sidewalks. All civilian areas – not military targets.
    ​ ​According to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DPR) Representative Office in the JCCC (Joint Monitoring and Co-ordination Center on Ukraine’s War Crimes), Kiev’s forces fired high-explosive fragmentation missiles “produced in Slovakia and transferred to Ukraine by NATO countries.” Regarding an earlier shelling on the same day, the JCCC noted that US-made HIMARS systems were used, targeting “exclusively in the residential, central quarter of the city.”
    https://www.rt.com/russia/576044-donetsk-civilians-ukrainian-shelling/

    #135090
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ ​The FBI is stonewalling Congressional investigators over an informant file (form FD-1023) which allegedly contains evidence that President Biden took bribes while he was Vice President, the NY Post reports.
    ​ ​After House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) hit the FBI with a subpoena last week demanding the document by noon Wednesday, the bureau responded with a six-page letter full of objections.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-stonewalls-smoking-gun-document-proving-biden-family-criminal-scheme

    ​Good for CNN; good forTrump, potentially good for America. Top Ten Moments From Trump’s CNN Town Hall
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/top-ten-moments-trumps-cnn-town-hall-aoc-and-jake-tapper-livid

    ​ ​RFK Jr. says he will ‘make the border impervious’ if elected as Title 42 is set to expire
    ​ ​”I will make the border impervious,” Kennedy said. “We cannot release people, illegal aliens across the border.”
    “But we also need to recognize that this is a humanitarian crisis, and we need to fix the policies that have caused this mass migration, including decades of U.S. foreign policy that have imposed austerity on those governments, neoliberal policies that have encouraged the rise of the Junta military dictatorship that has trained and supported death squads in countries across Central America,” Kennedy continued.
    ​ ​Kennedy warned that “we are now reaping the whirlwind of years of misguided foreign policies, of warmongering foreign policy.”
    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rfk-jr-says-he-will-make-border-impervious-if-elected-title-42-expire

    RFK Jr. doubles down on allegation CIA involved in JFK’s assassination: ’60-year cover-up’​ (He does not believe that Sirhan or Oswald were assassins.)
    Kennedy addressed differences with Biden on the border, Ukraine, COVID and transgender sports policies in wide-ranging ‘Hannity’ interview
    ​ ​Kennedy – the son of Bobby Kennedy, who was ​’​assassinated ​by Sirhan Sirhan​’​ in 1968​– claimed on “Hannity” Monday there is strong evidence the Central Intelligence Agency had a role in a plot that led to President John F. Kennedy’s ​’​assassination at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald​’​ in 1963.
    ​ ​”There’s millions of pages of documents; CIA documents, of transcripts, of recorded conversations from the Cuban embassy in Mexico City — it’s hard to summarize the evidence,” he said.
    ​ ​Kennedy said one of the Warren Commission’s leaders was ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles – brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles – who was notably fired by JFK.
    ​ ​”[Dulles] insinuated himself onto the Warren Commission and essentially ran the Warren Commission and kept this evidence from the Warren Commissioners. Either way, when Congress, 10 years later, investigated the crime with much more evidence than the Warren Commission had at its disposal,” Kennedy claimed.. “Congress found that, yeah, it was a plot. It was a conspiracy [and] there were multiple people involved.”
    ​ ​”And most of the people in that investigation believe that it was the CIA that was behind it – because the evidence was overwhelming to them.”
    ​ ​RFK Jr. recalled being in the White House East Room while his uncle’s body was lying in wake. He was with his father, Bobby, and aunt Jacqueline, and his mother Ethel.
    ​ ​President Lyndon Johnson came in to inform the group that Jack Ruby had just killed Oswald.​ [Ka-CHING!]
    ​ ​”I said to my mom at that point … why did [Ruby] kill [Oswald]? Did he love our family? – You know that is a lingering question – what was Jack Ruby doing there?” he recalled.
    ​ ​Kennedy said his father, the attorney general, had investigated Ruby and discovered alleged mob ties, including a mob leader he claimed was “recruited by the CIA in the [Fidel] Castro murder plot – so they were all working together in cahoots with the CIA.”
    ​ ​He also claimed his father called a CIA desk officer in Langley, Va., the day JFK was shot, and asked ,”Did your people do this?” Bobby Kennedy also called then-CIA Director John McCone and posed same question.
    ​ ​”It was my father’s first instinct that the agency had killed his brother,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said​ ​
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/rfk-jr-doubles-down-allegation-cia-involved-jfk-assassination-60-year-cover-up

    ​Thanks Christine:
    ​ Megyn Kelly is joined by Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to talk about his decision to run for president, the truth about the “misinformation” and “disinformation” of RFK Jr., ABC News’ censorship of him, how the media is supposed to work, RFK’s evolving views on Tucker Carlson, coordination between government agencies and the press related to the Hunter Biden laptop, Trump’s war in Ukraine comments, his relationship with Roger Ailes, whether Tucker Carlson fired due to Big Pharma criticism, if the DNC should have debates, Biden’s mental competence, the support of his wife actress Cheryl Hines, Fauci’s latest comments about masks and EcoHealth Alliance getting more millions, and more.

    #135091
    John Day
    Participant

    Iraq welcomes new agreement to expand energy ties with Iran
    As a result of US sanctions, Iraqi payments for Iranian fuel face multiple complications​ (Where there’s a will…”)
    ​ ​The meeting between Sudani, Owji, and Abdul Ghanni “resulted in an agreement to establish committees to discuss the development of joint fields under international agreements and cooperation in refining, petrochemicals, as well as oil exploration and infrastructure development,” an Iraqi Oil Ministry statement reads.
    https://thecradle.co/article-view/24722/iraq-welcomes-new-agreement-to-expand-energy-ties-with-iran

    ​The inside rumor is that all plans and individual responsibilities were laid out last summer. Explosive devices are prepared to be placed, armed and detonated.
    ​Taiwan Says Its Military Won’t Let the US Blow Up Semiconductor Factories
    ​ ​Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) recently said the US should “make it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC,” referring to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which produces the majority of the world’s advanced semiconductors.
    ​ ​When asked about Moutlon’s comments, Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said the military wouldn’t let that happen. “It is the military’s obligation to defend Taiwan and we will not tolerate any others blowing up our facilities,” he said, according to The South China Morning Post.
    [Oh, I see how this works. The Taiwanese military performs the tasks, not the Americans. Perfect.​ Less evacuation of personnel.​]

    Taiwan Says Its Military Won’t Let the US Blow Up Semiconductor Factories

    ​ This populist nationalist is by far the most popular Pakistani politician ever, has already been deposed and has taken a bullet for his principled stands against CIA objectives in his country. The Pakistani military is accustomed to running all of the politicians, but not Imran Khan.
    ​ ​Pakistan Top Court Orders Immediate Release Of Imran Khan, Declares Arrest Illegal
    ​ ​Khan was taken into custody when he appeared in the Islamabad High Court Tuesday, and was filmed being whisked away in an armored vehicle by dozens of anti-corruption task force agents dressed in Swat gear. The scene sparked outrage, and was interpreted by his opposition Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) as a political ploy to block him from challenging Shahbaz Sharif. Top military commanders have also come out against Khan.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/pakistan-top-court-orders-immediate-release-imran-khan-declares-arrest-illegal

    ​ ​Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu (of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party/AKP) on Friday charged that the United States is meddling in the country’s elections, set to take place Sunday. The national election is shaping up to be the biggest challenge to President Erdogan’s grip on power in years.
    ​ ​”The United States is meddling in these elections… Everyone in this country already knows this, US President [Joe Biden] himself declares this. The attack on [presidential candidate of Turkiye and leader of the Memleket party] Muharrem Ince… it is clear where it came from, it is clear where it was coordinated. This is America. In recent days, Biden has stepped up his people in Turkiye​.​”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/top-erdogan-official-accuses-us-meddling-turkish-elections

    ​Charles Hugh Smith: ​ Doom Loops Are Multiplying
    ​ ​Doom Loops are being used to describe big-city downtowns gutted by remote work, the closure of small businesses and the rise of property crime and chronic homelessness. Once the workforce commuting to downtown fell sharply, the businesses catering to this workforce no longer had a customer base large enough to support them all and so many close.
    ​ ​This mass closure makes the district less vibrant, further weakening commerce.
    ​ ​At the same time, politicians and district attorneys have mandated non-prosecution of non-violent property crimes such as auto break-ins, shoplifting, etc., giving the green light to the criminal class that specializes in property crimes. This increase in property crime forces the closure of flagship retail outlets stripmined by blatant shoplifting.​..
    ​..The closures of downtown businesses cause tax revenues to plummet, leaving less for policing and other essential services. Criminals quickly catch on and so break-ins occur when police patrols are absent.
    ​ ​Meanwhile, the decline in commuters has crushed transit agencies’ revenues, creating giant holes in billion-dollar budgets with few realistic solutions.​..
    ​..Another doom loop is gutting rural villages and towns globally. You’ve probably seen media reports of houses in Italian or Japanese villages that can be had for $1 or some nominal sum, for example: Why Japan is Giving Away 8 Million Free Houses (13 min) (via J.F.). Note: the 8-million number is click-bait.
    Left out of these chirpy accounts of $1 houses in charming villages are all the realities that generated the doom loop that hollowed out the villages in the first place: their remoteness, absence of jobs, the dominance of an aging populace of pensioners, decaying, outdated housing requiring costly renovations, the depreciating value of such properties, and so on.
    Once the post office closes due to a decline in the populace and the elementary school closes due to a decline in enrollment, the village is doomed. Families with children move away, further reducing the populace, pushing it below the thresholds needed to support a local temple/church priest, a local cafe, etc.
    Doom Loops are difficult to reverse. The current zeitgeist, which seems to only have two poles, complacency / denial and panic, is not conducive to practical, realistic appraisals or plans of action, all of which require painful sacrifices and reductions in unsustainable spending to align with reduced revenues and prospects.
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2023/05/doom-loops-are-multiplying.html

    #135092
    John Day
    Participant

    @Boscohorowitz: “and every NEWT in Idaho…”

    #135093
    Autonomous Unit
    Participant

    here’s the grain of truth regarding Bill Gates and population control vaccines:
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12346214/

    Abstract

    A priest, president of Human Life International (HLI) based in Maryland, has asked Congress to investigate reports of women in some developing countries unknowingly receiving a tetanus vaccine laced with the anti-fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). If it is true, he wants Congress to publicly condemn the mass vaccinations and to cut off funding to UN agencies and other involved organizations. The natural hormone hCG is needed to maintain pregnancy. The hormone would produce antibodies against hCG to prevent pregnancy. In the fall of 1994, the Pro Life Committee of Mexico was suspicious of the protocols for the tetanus toxoid campaign because they excluded all males and children and called for multiple injections of the vaccine in only women of reproductive age. Yet, one injection provides protection for at least 10 years. The Committee had vials of the tetanus vaccine analyzed for hCG. It informed HLI about the tetanus toxoid vaccine. HLI then told its World Council members and HLI affiliates in more than 60 countries. Similar tetanus vaccines laced with hCG have been uncovered in the Philippines and in Nicaragua. In addition to the World Health Organization (WHO), other organizations involved in the development of an anti-fertility vaccine using hCG include the UN Population Fund, the UN Development Programme, the World Bank, the Population Council, the Rockefeller Foundation, the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and Uppsala, Helsinki, and Ohio State universities. The priest objects that, if indeed the purpose of the mass vaccinations is to prevent pregnancies, women are uninformed, unsuspecting, and unconsenting victims.

    #135094
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #135095
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    I remember pointing out the elephant in the room, much to the dismay of TAE ( re: The Monkey Pox “Community”), now a fully cultured reality in La La Land:

    Health Officials Urge Monkeypox Vaccines Before LA Pride Events

    Just thought a few of you should be up-to-date 😉

    Getting near impossible to keep track of the ceaseless chapters added to the de-evolutionary Death March of Morals, Ethics, Spiritual *Sanity* sacrificed for the neolib Utopia of No Shame, Anything Goes

    Be safe out there all you Shuckin’ and Jivin’ kiddos!

    #135096
    John Day
    Participant

    Is Hunter Biden the “confidential huma source” the FBI won’t revealas the source of the documentation that tars Hunter, Joe and the rest of the Bidens?

    The Smell of Goose Cooking

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