May 172023
 
 May 17, 2023  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Pablo Picasso Woman Sitting Near a Window (Marie-Therese) 1932 (sold 2 years ago for $103.4 million)

 

Russia Case Against Trump: A Shocking Conspiracy That Continues Today (Turley)
The Durham Coverup (Lee Smith)
Special Counsel Reveals 2016 Trump-Russia FBI Investigative Failure (Max Jones)
Why Shouldn’t the Election Be Called Into Question? (BN)
Influence of ‘Russian Propaganda’ Growing – EU Official (RT)
Aide Reveals Zelensky’s F-16 Wish List – Politico (RT)
UK Will Help Supply Ukraine With F-16s (RT)
NATO’s Military Policies In Ukraine Posed Real Threat To Russia – Envoy (TASS)
How NATO Seduced The European Left (Lily Lynch)
Ukraine Says It Shoots Down More Missiles Than Russia Fires – Shoigu (RT)
Russia Likely Damaged US-Made Patriot Missile Battery – CNN (RT)
Ukraine’s Top Spy Admits Killing Russian Public Figures (RT)
Erdogan Accuses Biden Of Attempt To Topple Him (Cradle)
US May Designate Russia As State Sponsor Of Terrorism (Az.)
German ex-Chancellor’s Wife Fired For Attending May 9 Celebration (RT)
Musk: I’ll Say What I Want And If The Consequence Is Losing Money, So Be It (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Hawley

 

 

 

 

Lesley Stahl

 

 

 

 

Tapper
https://twitter.com/i/status/1658538596058423323

 

 

 

 

Biggs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1658501544952623104

 

 

 

 

Durham Report: Obama FBI offered Clinton campaign operative Christopher Steele as much as $1 million for dirt on Trump just one month before the 2016 election. Durham Report, p. 118

 

 

The West is not able to make up for the loss of armored vehicles to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Douglas McGregor, a former adviser to the head of the Pentagon, admitted in an interview.
“The Ukrainian army has lost almost 10,000 armored vehicles since the beginning of the conflict. This is unbelievable, 10 thousand! ”, The former adviser said.
He also emphasized that the colossal losses of equipment by the Ukrainian army speak of the “extreme effectiveness” of the Russian army in destroying armored vehicles. McGregor noted that sending weapons to Kiev could “bring money into the pockets of the American defense leadership,” but would not change the course of the conflict.

 

 

 

 

“Comey delighted viewers by saying: “Honestly, I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013.”

Russia Case Against Trump: A Shocking Conspiracy That Continues Today (Turley)

A political campaign hatches a plot to create a false claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Making this even more implausible is that the CIA and FBI know about the plot. As detailed in the report, President Barack Obama and his national security team were briefed on how “a trusted foreign source” revealed “a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server. It then happened a few days later. It was a plot that required everyone to take a hand in derailing a duly elected president and effectively shutting down his administration for three years of investigation and prosecutions. In this conspiracy, there were dozens of key participants in the campaign, the government, and the media. Here are a few of the characters implicated in this report.

The report details how the Russian collusion conspiracy was invented by Clinton operatives and put into the now-infamous Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign. The funding was hidden as legal expenses by then-Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias. (The Clinton campaign was later sanctioned by the FEC over its hiding of the funding.) New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” It was not just reporters who asked the Clinton campaign about its role in the Steele dossier.

John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress. Durham details how Elias played an active role in tracking the media campaign to push the false allegations. (Elias was recently severed by the Democratic National Committee from further representation and has been previously sanctioned in the federal courts in other litigation.) The report details how false claims like the existence of a “pee tape” showing Trump engaging in disgusting acts with prostitutes in Moscow came from a Clinton operative, Chuck Dolan, with no known basis in fact.

Likewise, now-national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Clinton personally pushed an absurd campaign-created conspiracy theory about a secret communication line between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin through a Russian bank. The Clinton campaign later admitted that it had indeed funded the dossier, but Clinton continued to claim that the election was stolen from her by the Russians. Of course, this conspiracy could not occur without the assistance of the FBI, which Durham found played an eager role due to a “predisposition” of key players against Trump. The dossier was discredited early by American intelligence, which learned that it might itself be Russian disinformation. There never was support for the allegations, but the FBI launched and maintained a massive investigation anyway.

Durham noted that the FBI showed a completely different approach to allegations involving the Clinton campaign. The Trump investigation was a “noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign.” Nevertheless, former FBI Director James Comey would continue to reference the entirely unsupported “pee tape” in interviews. Even though investigators found no support for the campaign-created story, in a 2018 interview, Comey delighted viewers by saying: “Honestly, I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013.”

Peepee

Read more …

“Did Ex-CIA Director John Brennan Doctor His Notes to Hide His Role in Russiagate?”

“..virtually none of the officials interviewed by Durham knew about the Clinton Plan intelligence..”

The Durham Coverup (Lee Smith)

The only genuine piece of Russian intelligence that US spy services ever received about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia was intelligence that Russia knew Hillary Clinton backed a 2016 campaign plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent. According to John Durham’s 300-page report, the information reached the CIA in late July 2016. Brennan told Durham that on August 3 he briefed President Barack Obama at the White House on what the special counsel refers to as the Clinton Plan intelligence. Others in attendance at the meeting were Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey. Imagine Comey’s reaction when he first heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence, only days after the July 31 start date for the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s alleged ties to Russia, code-named Crossfire Hurricane:

So, if it’s just a dirty trick staged by the Clinton campaign, I should shut down the Trump-Russia probe, right? Right. There is little chance Brennan said anything about the Clinton Plan intelligence in that August 3 meeting. Reading the Durham report, it’s not even clear when Brennan first found out about it or the September 2016 CIA memo referring the Clinton Plan intelligence to the FBI’s counterintelligence division. Brennan’s handwritten notes memorializing his allegedly briefing Obama on the Clinton Plan and the CIA’s referral letter were both declassified by Trump’s Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe in October 2020. Durham’s report sheds light on how the information and subsequent CIA memo were received, who knew about them, and perhaps more significantly who didn’t.

According to the report, virtually none of the officials interviewed by Durham knew about the Clinton Plan intelligence or the referral memo. Former FBI general counsel James Baker “stated that he had neither seen nor heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence or the resulting Referral Memo prior to his interview” with Durham. Same with Supervisory Special Agent-1, reportedly FBI agent Joe Pientka. According to the report, when Durham showed Pientka the information, he became “visibly upset and emotional, left the interview room with his counsel, and subsequently returned to state emphatically that he had never been apprised of the Clinton Plan intelligence and had never seen the aforementioned Referral Memo. Supervisory Special Agent-1 expressed a sense of betrayal that no one had informed him of the intelligence.”

The reason so few FBI officials knew of the Clinton Plan information is because it was buried. Otherwise, it would have implicated senior Obama officials — from the president and vice president and his security chiefs — and the Crossfire Hurricane team in an illegal surveillance and propaganda operation targeting a presidential campaign. But how did the Russians know it started with Hillary Clinton? Did they have spies buried deep inside the Democratic National Committee? Maybe Christopher Steele, British ex-spy and author of the Clinton-funded memos tying Trump to Russia, had been compromised by one of the Russian oligarchs he worked for? No, you wouldn’t have needed an intelligence service to find out the Clinton campaign was using Moscow as an instrument to smear the GOP candidate. By the end of July, much of the anti-Trump campaign was public.

Nunes

Read more …

“The FBI” is made up of real people. Go after them.

Special Counsel Reveals 2016 Trump-Russia FBI Investigative Failure (Max Jones)

• The Australian diplomats told Crossfire Hurricane investigators that Papadopoulos never stated that he had any direct contact with the Russians nor did he provide any explicit information about an offer of assistance.
• There was a complete lack of information from the Intelligence Community that corroborated the hypothesis upon which the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was predicated.
• The FBI generally ignored the significant exculpatory information provided by Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Trump Senior Foreign Policy Advisor-! during recorded conversations with FBI CHSs.
• The FBI failed to pursue investigative leads that were inconsistent with their theory of the case (e.g., Page’s recorded denials of having any relationship with Paul Manafort, a fact about which there was available evidence).
• The FBI failed to take Page up on the written offer he made to Director Corney to be interviewed about the allegations contained in Michael Isikoff s Yahoo 1 News article and instead opted to seek FISA surveillance of Page.
• The FBI was willing to make use of the completely unvetted and uncorroborated Steele reporting in multiple FISA applications targeting a U.S. citizen, even after the Crossfire Hurricane investigators had determined that there were major conflicts between the reporting of Steele and his primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko – conflicts the FBI incredibly failed to resolve.
• The Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not even ask Steele about his role in providing information to Michael Isikoff as contained in the September 23, 2016 Yahoo! News article – information that essentially accused Carter Page of colluding with the Russians. And thereafter the same investigators demonstrated a willingness to contort the plain language of the article to suggest it was not Steele but Steele’s employers who had given the information to Isikoff.
• The FBI ignored the fact that at no time before, during or after Crossfire Hurricane were investigators able to corroborate a single substantive allegation in the Steele dossier reporting.
• There was a complete failure on the part of the FBI to even examine – never mind resolve – the serious counterespionage issues surrounding Steele’s primary subsource, Igor Danchenko.
• The FBI leadership essentially disregarded the Clinton Plan intelligence, which it received at almost the exact same time as the Australian Paragraph Five information. This was despite the fact that at precisely the same time as the Clinton Plan intelligence was received (i) the Clinton campaign made public statements tying the DNC computer hack to Russian attempts to help Trump get elected, (ii) the FBI was receiving the Clinton campaign-funded Steele Reports, and (iii) the Clinton campaign-funded Alfa Bank allegations were being prepared for delivery to the media and the FBI.
• The Crossfire Hurricane investigators essentially ignored information they had received as early as October 2016 regarding Charles Dolan, a longtime Democratic operative with ties to the Clintons who also possessed significant ties to Russian government figures who would appear in the Steele reporting, and never interviewed him.
• The Crossfire Hurricane investigators provided only partial, and in some instances misleading, information to Department attorneys working on the Page FISA applications while withholding other highly relevant information from those attorneys and the FISC that might cast real doubt on their probable cause assertions.

Pelosi


Schiff

Read more …

Durham makes this inevitable.

Why Shouldn’t the Election Be Called Into Question? (BN)

The Five’s co-host Greg Gutfeld unleashed a powerful diatribe in the aftermath of Monday’s Durham Report revelations detailing a full-fledged election interference operation carried out by the FBI and CIA in concert with the knowledge and approval of the Obama White House and driven in part by a Clinton Plan to ‘stir up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.” Gutfeld defended Americans who continue to be skeptical about election integrity in the wake of the contested 2020 election that saw Joe Biden officially elected president over Donald Trump. “If you have people saying that the country will not survive Trump, then your moral duty is to cheat. Right?” he asked rhetorically. “And you should cheat. Like if somebody believe is telling everybody that this person is a modern day Hitler, it is your duty to do whatever is possible to stop him. In fact, if you actually play by the rules, you’re a traitor. Right?”

Gutfeld

“So, they created a devil that was so big and so vast that made all actions permissible,” he continued. “And it made every institution as, as the judge was saying, subject to suspicion, right? So you can bury stories, you can create hoaxes, you can fund smears, it could go anywhere, because this person must be stopped. It’s Hitler! An existential threat. And so what happens is now we’re left and none of it’s true? And so we had a half a decade hoax that infected and undermined every institution because we are made to believe this person is evil.” “And then people make fun of people who are skeptical about an election,” he went on. “Why shouldn’t they be skeptical about an election when the DOJ and the FBI and the mainstream media and the tech companies and the Chamber of Commerce are all in on the same thing.”


“Why shouldn’t the election be called into question? Right?” he asked. “Shouldn’t a hero try to fix the election? Right? Shouldn’t a hero do that? If you’re up against Hitler, that’s where we ended up. And you can’t go and condemn people for so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ when you were going around telling everybody this guy was worse than Hitler. No.” The Fox News co-host’s rant flies in the face of the pivot of the network away from pro-Trump coverage and away from questioning the 2020 election following a $750 million dollar lawsuit settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. Tucker Carlson, who was depositioned for the lawsuit, lost his popular primetime cable news show in the fallout, leading some media observers to believe that it may in part be connected to his 2020 election coverage. Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of Fox Corporation, in his own deposition was highly critical of the Fox News’ coverage, even going so far as to state news “news networks should not knowingly broadcast lies.”

Read more …

“infiltration of the peace movement..”

“In many countries, the narrative that Russia is not the aggressor but the victim is on the rise..”

Influence of ‘Russian Propaganda’ Growing – EU Official (RT)

EU member states should spend more money on “strategic communications” because “Russian propaganda” is affecting their people, a senior official from the bloc has said. RT must remain banned in the region, while “independent” Russian media based in European nations need support, EU Commissioner Vera Jourova added. The Czech politician and European Commission veteran, who currently serves as its vice president for values and transparency, expressed her concern about the growing popularity of Russian positions on issues like the conflict in Ukraine during an interview with German newspaper Bild on Sunday. “In many countries, the narrative that Russia is not the aggressor but the victim is on the rise,” Jourova told the outlet.

“In Slovakia, more than 50% of the population believe in conspiracy theories, including those about the Russian war of aggression. To this day, we underestimate the influence of Russian propaganda.” Moscow maintains that the conflict in Ukraine stems from NATO’s unchecked expansion in Europe and the failure of Western nations to heed Russian warnings about how it was perceived by the country. A last-ditch attempt to de-escalate the situation was taken by the Russian government in 2021, but it was told that its concerns were unfounded and that Ukraine had a right to seek membership of the US-led military organization. From Russia’s perspective, the conflict is part of a proxy war against it by the West. The problem with EU citizens agreeing with the Russian position is that Moscow “invests billions in its propaganda and we hardly do anything to counter it,” Jourova claimed. She urged member states to invest more in “strategic communications and the fight against disinformation.”

Germany, Jourova suggested, is a particularly important target for Russia. She said she was worried about “infiltration of the peace movement” in the country. “Claiming that anyone supplying arms is a warmonger is extremely dangerous,” she explained. “This only serves to weaken the support for Ukraine.” The commissioner praised the EU’s censorship of RT, describing the channel as “not a media outlet” but rather a “wartime propaganda weapon” that has no place in Europe. “We should instead support the independent Russian media,” she suggested. “Many of them are here in Berlin and in other European cities.” The vice president’s office is reportedly behind a push to introduce a law in the EU to crackdown on “foreign agents.” Politico reported on a survey of nonprofits in March, who were asked whether they had foreign sources of funding. This was conducted ahead of a legislative package intended to “defend democracy.”

Read more …

They’ll be flying ducks, so to speak..

Aide Reveals Zelensky’s F-16 Wish List – Politico (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky wants the US and its allies to provide Kiev with between 40 and 50 F-16 fighter jets for use in its conflict with Russia, according to Yury Sak, an aide to Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov. This would be enough to form three or four squadrons of American-made fourth generation aircraft to protect the Ukrainian skies amid a large-scale Russian missile campaign, Sak told Politico on Monday. Kiev has been asking its Western backers for F-16s for months, but the need for the jets has become much more pressing since March, when Russia began using guided glide bombs that strike targets at greater distances, the adviser claimed. Ukraine currently has “nothing to stop” the Russian aircraft that launch those munitions, he admitted.

Zelensky has been touring Europe in the past week, visiting Italy, Germany, France and the UK in an attempt to ramp up military support for Ukraine. After talks with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday, the Ukrainian leader said he wanted to create a “jets coalition” of countries to facilitate the supply of F-16s to Kiev. “I’m very positive [about the plan]. We spoke about it and I see that in the closest time, you will hear some, I think, very important decisions – but we have to work a little bit more on it,” the Ukrainian president told reporters. London, Rome, Berlin and Paris don’t have F-16s to offer Ukraine but, according to Sak, those European powers “have an important voice in the international coalition.” Kiev wants them to “encourage” their allies, such as the US and Turkey, to make the deliveries, he explained.

Zelensky’s latest diplomatic efforts have resulted in him receiving “assurances” from Western leaders that they would address the issue of F-16s at the annual G7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan this weekend. “Everybody understands that the topic is ripe for discussion. Nobody said that it’s impossible. If you compared it with three months ago, when we were still struggling to get tanks, today everybody is talking about the jet coalition – that’s a very promising sign,” Sak said. Russia has repeatedly warned that deliveries of more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine by the US and its allies could cross its ‘red lines’, which would lead to a major escalation. According to Moscow, the supply of arms, intelligence sharing and training provided to Kiev’s troops have already made Western nations de facto parties to the conflict.

Read more …

Let’s kill more young Ukrainians…

UK Will Help Supply Ukraine With F-16s (RT)

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would work to create an “international coalition” to provide Western fighter jets to Ukraine, pledging to bolster the country’s “combat air capabilities” alongside allies. In a statement issued following a meeting with Dutch PM Mark Rutte at a Council of Europe summit on Tuesday, Sunak’s office said the two leaders would take steps to help coordinate aircraft shipments to Kiev. “[Sunak] and Prime Minister Rutte agreed they would work to build [an] international coalition to provide Ukraine with combat air capabilities, supporting [it] with everything from training to procuring F16 jets,” 10 Downing Street said, stressing the “importance of allies providing long-term security assistance to Ukraine.” The prime minister did not specify what country might offer the American-made fighter jet, which is operated by more than two dozen nations, but suggested he would press allies to help facilitate the weapons transfers.

Ukrainian officials have requested the aircraft for months, with a senior Defense Ministry aide telling Politico on Monday that Kiev hopes to receive up to 50 F-16s from Washington and other partners. Since Moscow stepped up its use of guided glide bombs in March, the aide said Ukraine has “nothing to stop” Russian planes equipped with them. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met with Sunak in an unannounced visit to the UK on Monday, where he called for a new “coalition of jets,” an idea well received by the British PM. The concept has been proposed by Kiev and other allies before, with Poland also voicing interest in such a project after providing some of its own Soviet-era MiG-29 fighters. Despite the renewed discussion of a jet coalition, some Western powers appear reluctant to supply advanced warplanes.

Though Ukrainian pilots are already being trained to operate the F-16 by the US military – and will soon receive similar instruction from British pilots – American, German and French officials have indicated they would not be willing to supply jets from their own arsenals. However, Washington has previously reversed course after declining to provide certain weapons systems, including the Patriot missile defense platform and the M1 Abrams main battle tank, both of which have since been pledged to Ukraine. Berlin, too, backtracked after refusing to transfer its Leopard 2 tank, agreeing to send the weapon earlier this year following pressure from allies. Russia has repeatedly warned that deliveries of more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine could cross its ‘red lines’ and lead to a major escalation. According to Moscow, the arms, intelligence and training provided to Kiev’s troops have already made Western nations de facto parties to the conflict.

Read more …

“These countries “had been pursuing an openly anti-Russian policy long before the current events in Ukraine.”

NATO’s Military Policies In Ukraine Posed Real Threat To Russia – Envoy (TASS)

The threat to Russia resulting from NATO, US and Britain’s military policies in Ukraine was real, Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN headquarters in Geneva, said at the plenary session of the Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday. “The threat to Russia’s security from the military development of Ukraine’s territory was real and acute and similar to what the US itself experienced during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis,” he said. Gatilov dismissed as falsehoods the accusations made by the US and other NATO countries against Moscow to the effect that the conflict in Ukraine was allegedly “unprovoked aggression.” “In deciding on a special military operation Russia took into account many security factors,” the Russian envoy said. In this regard, Gatilov recalled “the Kiev regime’s agreement in principle to the accelerated strategic development of Ukrainian territory by the NATO ‘nuclear alliance’ hostile to Russia” as well as “our country’s two nuclear adversaries – the US and Britain.


These countries “had been pursuing an openly anti-Russian policy long before the current events in Ukraine.” “In this context, it is worth recalling London’s construction of a naval base in the Ukrainian port city of Ochakov, NATO’s anti-Russian exercise Sea Breeze in the summer of 2021, which ended with the reckless behavior of a British ship that came under fire from the Russian armed forces and was forced to retreat,” Gatilov said. Furthermore, he continued, in September 2020, the US Air Force “used the airspace over Ukrainian territory for familiarization flights by heavy US B-52 nuclear-capable strategic bombers.” The Russian envoy noted that Moscow had warned of “the unacceptability of these irresponsible and destabilizing actions” and proposed “various initiatives for preventing the emerging conflict”.

Read more …

It’s the women…

“..telegenic female leaders such as the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, have increasingly served as the spokespersons of enlightened militarism in Europe..”

And the Estonian PM in the video.

How NATO Seduced The European Left (Lily Lynch)

In January 2018, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg held an unprecedented press conference with Angelina Jolie. While InStyle reported that Jolie “was dressed in a black off-the-shoulder sheath dress, a matching capelet and classic pumps (also black)”, there was a deeper purpose to this meeting: sexual violence in war. The pair had just co-authored a piece for the Guardian entitled “Why NATO must defend women’s rights”. The timing was significant. At the height of the #MeToo movement, the most powerful military alliance in the world had become a feminist ally. “Ending gender-based violence is a vital issue of peace and security as well as of social justice,” they wrote. “NATO can be a leader in this effort.”

This was a new and progressive face for Nato, the same one it has since used to seduce much of the European Left. Previously, in the Nordic countries, Atlanticists have had to sell war and militarism to largely pacifist publics. This was achieved in part by presenting Nato not as a rapacious, pro-war military alliance, but as an enlightened, “progressive” peace alliance. As Timothy Garton Ash effused in the Guardian in 2002, “NATO has become a European peace movement” where one could watch “John Lennon meet George Bush”. Today, by contrast, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland abandoned their long-standing traditions of neutrality and opted for membership. Nato is portrayed as a military alliance -and Ukraine a war- that even former pacifists can get behind. All its proponents seem to be singing is “Give War a Chance”.

The Jolie campaign marked a dramatic turn in what Katharine A.M. Wright and Annika Bergman Rosamond call “Nato’s strategic narrative” in several ways. First, the alliance embraced celebrity star power for the first time, imbuing its unremarkable brand with elite glamour and beauty. Jolie’s star power meant that the alluring images of the event reached apolitical audiences with little knowledge of Nato. Second, the partnership seemed to usher in an era in which women’s rights, gendered violence and feminism would assume a more prominent role in Nato rhetoric. Since then, and especially in the past 12 months, telegenic female leaders such as the Finnish Prime Minister, Sanna Marin, German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, and Estonian Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, have increasingly served as the spokespersons of enlightened militarism in Europe. The alliance has also intensified its engagement with popular culture, new technologies, and youth influencers.

[..] No political party in Europe better exemplifies the shift from militant pacifism to ardent pro-war Atlanticism than the German Greens. Most of the original Greens had been radicals during the student protests of 1968; many had demonstrated against American wars. The early Greens advocated for West Germany’s withdrawal from Nato. But as the founding members entered middle age, fissures began to appear in the party that would one day tear it apart. Two camps began to coalesce: the “Realos” were the moderate Greens, politically pragmatists. The “Fundis” were the radical, uncompromising camp; they wanted the party to remain faithful to its fundamental values no matter what.

Predictably, the Fundis believed that European peace would be best served by West Germany’s withdrawal from the alliance and tended to favour military neutrality. Meanwhile, the Realos believed that West Germany needed Nato. They even argued that withdrawal would return matters of security to the German nation-state and risk rekindling militaristic nationalism. Their Nato was a post-national, cosmopolitan alliance, speaking numerous languages and flying a multitude of flags, protecting Europe from Germany’s most destructive impulses. But Nato membership at the end of history was one thing. Germany going to war again — the most forbidden of taboos after World War II — was something else entirely.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1658588374511263746

Read more …

“..The minister also said that Ukraine “always” misidentifies munitions used by Russia in its media statements. “That’s why they miss them..”

Ukraine Says It Shoots Down More Missiles Than Russia Fires – Shoigu (RT)

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has refuted claims made by Ukrainian military officials about shooting down six Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles during overnight strikes on targets near the country’s capital city of Kiev. Ukraine routinely exaggerates the effectiveness of its anti-aircraft defenses, primarily ‘intercepting’ incoming Russian munitions only with public statements, Shoigu told RIA Novosti. “I have already said that, and I will repeat it again. We have not launched as many ‘Kinzhals’ as they allegedly shoot down every time with their statements. Moreover, the number of these ‘Ukrainian interceptions’ – and who really mans the American [anti-aircraft] complexes there, is still a big question – is three times as high as what we actually launch,” Shoigu stated.

The minister also said that Ukraine “always” misidentifies munitions used by Russia in its media statements. “That’s why they miss them,” he added, without providing any further information on the number of missiles used in the latest barrage. Ukraine was subjected to a new massive missile and suicide drone barrage overnight, with the country’s capital city of Kiev seeing particularly intense activity by Ukrainian anti-aircraft defenses, footage circulating online suggests. Moscow and Kiev have provided drastically different accounts of what happened overnight. Kiev claimed that it had shot down six state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles over the capital, as well as other incoming projectiles, using a battery of the US-made Patriot air defense system.

The Russian military, however, said the battery was successfully hit by a Kinzhal missile. Footage available online shows multiple anti-aircraft missiles going towards an unseen target, with at least two explosions seen at the site from which they appeared to be launched. Western media reports suggested the Patriot battery in question was likely damaged in the strike. According to CNN, citing an unidentified US official, Washington is currently assessing the extent of the damage in order to determine whether the Patriots need to be pulled back or whether on-site repairs by Ukrainian forces would be enough.

Read more …

The unlikely story of Ukraine downing a Kizhal is very popular. This much more likely story, much less so.

Russia Likely Damaged US-Made Patriot Missile Battery – CNN (RT)

A hypersonic missile strike by Russia has reportedly hit a US-supplied Patriot air-defense system in Kiev, potentially knocking the battery out of commission amid Moscow’s escalating attacks in western Ukraine. The Patriot system was likely damaged, but not destroyed, in a Russian missile barrage against Kiev on Tuesday morning, CNN reported, citing an unidentified US official. Washington is assessing the damage to determine whether the battery needs to be pulled back or repaired on site by Ukrainian forces, the outlet said. The report came hours after the Russian Defense Ministry announced that a hypersonic Kinzhal missile strike had destroyed a Patriot base in Kiev. Tuesday’s strikes also took out Ukrainian troop positions, munitions storage facilities, and Western-supplied weapons, the ministry said in a press briefing.

Ukrainian officials said earlier on Tuesday that they had intercepted six hypersonic missiles with their Patriot systems, a claim touted by Western media as proof that Kiev was thwarting a supposedly “unstoppable” Russian weapon. CNN said a US National Security Council spokesperson referred questions about the successful Russian strike to Ukrainian officials, who declined to comment on Moscow’s claim. Ukraine reportedly has two Patriot systems in operation – one supplied by the US and a battery provided jointly by Germany and the Netherlands. “Taking one out of commission, even for a short period, could affect Ukraine’s ability to defend Kiev amid intensifying Russian missile attacks,” CNN said. US officials told CNN last week that Moscow had targeted a Patriot system in a hypersonic strike earlier this month, but Ukrainian forces used the battery to intercept the Russian missile.

The outlet said Patriot batteries use a powerful radar to detect incoming threats at long range, enabling Russia’s military to pick up their signals and determine their location. Although the US military confirmed Ukraine’s claim of a successful missile intercept earlier this month, officials didn’t say whether the Kinzhal was flying at hypersonic speed at the time. Russia’s hypersonic missiles can travel at speeds up to Mach 12 (about 14,800 kilometers per hour) while performing evasive maneuvers, making them capable of penetrating any current air-defense systems. Missiles that fly at Mach 5 or above are classified as hypersonic. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was highly unlikely that Ukraine shot down a Kinzhal missile, which he described as having “absolutely unique characteristics.”

Read more …

“Zakharova wrote on Telegram: “Will the UN not notice that again?” The remarks are the latest in a string of bloodthirsty statements..”

Ukraine’s Top Spy Admits Killing Russian Public Figures (RT)

Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) chief General Kirill Budanov has claimed responsibility for assassinating “many” Russian public figures. The spy boss made the bombshell admission in an interview with Ukrainian blogger Sergey Ivanov on Tuesday. Asked whether top Russian “propagandists,” such as prominent journalist Vladimir Solovyov or RT’s Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, are prime targets for his organization, Budanov responded that the GUR had already “gotten” multiple high profile targets. “We have already gotten many, including public and media personalities,” Budanov said, without providing any names.

Pressed further by the blogger on the potential involvement of the GUR in the assassination of Darya Dugina, a journalist and the daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, or the recent car bombing of Russian author and political activist Zakhar Prilepin, the spy boss said he could “neither confirm nor deny” the involvement of his service. Budanov’s remarks were condemned by Moscow, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stating that they were a clear admission of wrongdoing. “Terrorists. Those who provide excuses for the Kiev regime and sponsor it are accomplices of terrorists,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram. “Will the UN not notice that again?” The remarks are the latest in a string of bloodthirsty statements made by the GUR boss amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev.

Earlier this month, Budanov declared, “We’ve been killing Russians, and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.” The pledge received an equally poor reception in Russia, with multiple top officials branding it an admission of engaging in state-level terrorism by Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for instance, said Budanov’s statement was “unprecedented in its essence,” and it was “strange” to not hear any condemnation “from European capitals and from Washington.” “It’s evident that the Kiev regime is behind the killings, not only sponsoring them but organizing, inciting, and carrying them out. De facto, we’re talking about a state sponsor of terrorism,” Peskov concluded, warning that Russia’s “special services know what to do after such statements.”

Read more …

“..the US must “support those elements of the Turkish leadership that still exist and get more from them and embolden them to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan..”

Erdogan Accuses Biden Of Attempt To Topple Him (Cradle)

On the eve of critical Turkiye’s elections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his supporters that US President Joe Biden had given instructions to topple him, Rudaw reported on 14 May. “Biden gave the instructions saying ‘we have to topple Erdogan.’ I know this. All my people know this. Tomorrow the ballots will give Biden an answer as well,” Erdogan said during an election rally in Istanbul on Saturday, 13 May, the day before voting began. At the rally, Erdogan also criticized his challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who had accused Russia of spreading fabricated videos and fake content online to damage his campaign to unseat Erdogan. Erdogan said Russia is a crucial ally in the agriculture, defense, and tourism sectors, but NATO member Turkiye has also sold weapons and arms, including drones, to Ukraine in its war with Russia. In Sunday’s widely anticipated voting, Erdogan received 49.40 percent of the votes, while Kilicdaroglu received 44.96 percent.


However, neither candidate received the required 50% of votes to avoid a second round runoff vote, which will now take place in two weeks to determine Turkiye’s next president. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Biden described Erdogan as an autocrat and claimed his relationship with the Turkish president had deteriorated significantly. Biden explained, as a result, that his “comfort level [about having nuclear weapons in Turkiye] is diminished a great deal.” Biden stated that Erdogan needs to better integrate the country’s Kurdish population via participation in parliamentary elections and that the US must “support those elements of the Turkish leadership that still exist and get more from them and embolden them to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process.”

Read more …

More empty gestures.

US May Designate Russia As State Sponsor Of Terrorism (Az.)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Department of State would not rule out designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism for its accused atrocities in Ukraine. Report informs that, according to CNN, in an angry line of questioning at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on China on May 16, Sen. Lindsey Graham asked Blinken: “You’re never going to designate Russian state sponsored terrorism, are you?” Blinken quickly responded, “never say never.” Lawmakers and Ukrainian officials have repeatedly put pressure on the Biden administration to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terror, but the Biden administration has not taken that action out of concern for unintended consequences.

Read more …

“..he has also expressed doubt that distancing himself from Putin “would do any good.”

German ex-Chancellor’s Wife Fired For Attending May 9 Celebration (RT)

The wife of former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, So-yeon Schroeder-Kim, has been fired from her position at a business development agency after visiting the Russian Embassy in Berlin to celebrate Victory Day. “Ms. Schroeder-Kim has been released with immediate effect, and the employment relationship will now be terminated by NRW.GlobalBusiness without notice,” a spokeswoman for NRW told German media on Tuesday. The company explained that it had on several occasions explicitly told Schroeder-Kim, who worked there as a representative for South Korea, that she should “not speak out in public on politically sensitive topics,” particularly with regard to Russia and the situation in Ukraine.

The move comes after Schroeder-Kim and her husband visited the Russian Embassy on May 9 to attend a reception dedicated to the 78th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. The event was also attended by other German politicians, including co-chairman of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party Tino Chrupalla, and chairman of the Bundestag committee on climate protection and energy and member of the Left Party Klaus Ernst. Schroeder himself has also faced backlash for maintaining close ties with Moscow. The former chancellor forged friendly relations with Russia during his time in office between 1998 and 2005, and has kept in contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin throughout the years. Although Schroeder has repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s offensive in Ukraine, he has also expressed doubt that distancing himself from Putin “would do any good.”

Shortly after Moscow launched its military campaign, Schroeder personally traveled to Moscow to meet with Putin. He has insisted since that Russia sought a negotiated solution to the ongoing conflict and had vowed to keep seeking “opportunities to talk to President Putin.” The former chancellor’s stance has put him at odds with other members of the ruling Social Democrats Party (SPD), some members of which have recently unsuccessfully demanded his expulsion. The SPD did, however, manage to strip the former leader of his parliamentary privileges last year. Under current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the SPD has sought to reduce the country’s ties with Russia and its reliance on Russian energy. Berlin, under Scholz’s leadership, has also sent billions of dollars worth of military aid to Kiev’s forces throughout the past year.

Read more …

“I wish we could have just a normal human being as president.”

Musk: I’ll Say What I Want And If The Consequence Is Losing Money, So Be It (ZH)

Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk sat down for an hour-long candid, sprawling interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday following Tesla’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas. Among many other things, Musk reflected on: Accusations from the left over his tweets which have been criticized as lending credence to conspiracies about George Soros and a recent mass shooting event in Allen, Texas, insisting “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.”


Clearly this displeased Musk’s critics, who can’t comprehend how someone who hopes to receive major ad dollars (and thus be beholden to the largest US corporations via advertising channel) can speak his mind. In fact, according to Bethany McLean, “Elon Musk sounds like a spoiled child when he talks about free speech,” adding that “If you run a business that depends on advertisers you might have to think about it a little bit differently and Musk seems utterly unwilling to make that distinction.” Translation: if you run a business that depends on advertisers, you can’t say anything your advertisers disagree with. Which of course is another way of being subject to the censorship of the establishment, and why traditional media is always silent when certain interests – be it of generous advertisers like Pfizer, or the Deep State, or the Bidens, or the Clintons, etc – are in question.

Musk defended what Faber said was the spreading of “conspiracy theories” by countering that pointing out that so many of these “conspiracy theories have turned out to be true”, and pointed to the Hunter Biden laptop suppression story, which was an example of “election interference.” Naturally, the question of Musk calling George Soros Magnito came up. An incongruous Faber asks where that tweet came from, to which Musk replies “that is my opinion.” Faber then pressed: “why share it” if it could lead to less revenue/sales, and do your tweets “hurt the company”; Musk responds with a quote from the Princess Bride: “offer me money; offer me power. I don’t care.” The sad fact is that all of Musk’s peers in the media world, who aren’t independently wealthy and who do care about money (and power) will gladly be PR agents for their advertising sponsors, pretending to be independent media outlets.


How he has managed a takeover of Twitter so far and what lies ahead. Among other things, he said Twitter’s Community Notes feature has cost Twitter $40 million in business when two big clients reduced spending after their ads received community notes accusing them of false advertising. He also claimed that when the acquisition closed, Twitter had negative $3 billion in annual cash flow and $1 billion in the bank. “The analogy I was using was like being teleported into a plane that’s in a nosedive headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work….” Musk said he voted for Biden but hinted he wasn’t happy with his choice, saying “I wish we could have just a normal human being as president.” Asked if he believes the 2020 election was stolen, Musk said no, but countered that there certainly has been election fraud. Musk even slammed the obvious CIA front Bellingcat. Discussing the recent Texas shooting, Musk said the shooter was “incorrectly described to be a white supremacist. The company that found this is Belingcat. Do you know what Belingcat is? A company that does Psyops.”

Errol Musk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1658536557890895873

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Nordstream evidence

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spots

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle May 17 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 47 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #135322

    Pablo Picasso Woman Sitting Near a Window (Marie-Therese) 1932 (sold 2 years ago for $103.4 million)   • Russia Case Against Trump: A Shocking Co
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 17 2023]

    #135323
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Ha ha ha ha!

    According to the report, virtually none of the officials interviewed by Durham knew about the Clinton Plan intelligence or the referral memo. Former FBI general counsel James Baker “stated that he had neither seen nor heard of the Clinton Plan intelligence or the resulting Referral Memo prior to his interview” with Durham. Same with Supervisory Special Agent-1, reportedly FBI agent Joe Pientka. According to the report, when Durham showed Pientka the information, he became “visibly upset and emotional, left the interview room with his counsel, and subsequently returned to state emphatically that he had never been apprised of the Clinton Plan intelligence and had never seen the aforementioned Referral Memo. Supervisory Special Agent-1 expressed a sense of betrayal that no one had informed him of the intelligence.”

    The reason so few FBI officials knew of the Clinton Plan information is because it was buried

    Visibly upset and emotional….sure as the more socially acceptable and functionally admirable “invisibly upset and unemotional” as we witnessed recently with TikTokking RNs not protesting their vulnerable patients placed on murderously needless ventilators during the “stacked like cordwood COVID crisis”. However, 98 percent of co-opted MDs participated too. So there’s that.

    However you gotta love the adjacent article posted by our host that states in its title CIAs John Brennan “DOCTOR[ed]” the memorandum.

    Doctor as in change something in order to deceive people or pretend something works like mRNA vaccines and ventilators when they don’t simply because we can’t handle the blow to our self-esteem or the banking bottom line

    #135324
    Red
    Participant

    What “they” under estimate is the fact that a large portion of their citizens don’t buy the shit they’re selling. Decades of falsehoods and outright lies that are being exposed daily now and the bureaucracy is wondering how it lost its flock! Reflection doesn’t seem to be their strong suit.

    “In Slovakia, more than 50% of the population believe in conspiracy theories, including those about the Russian war of aggression. To this day, we underestimate the influence of Russian propaganda.”

    #135325
    Red
    Participant

    We need a lot more of this:

    “His lawyer, Pierre-Olivier Sur, told AFP that the summons had been sent too close to the day and was therefore “invalid”.

    A Lebanese legal source told AFP this week that the authorities there had failed to serve Salameh with the summons, despite four attempts by police to deliver it to the central bank.

    After Salameh failed to show Tuesday, the magistrate in charge of the case had the option of issuing a fresh summons, but instead decided to issue an international warrant for his arrest.”

    https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230516-france-issues-international-arrest-warrant-for-lebanese-central-bank-chief

    #135326
    Red
    Participant

    The following sounds like a fair description of most western .govs at this point.

    “[The Tories’] solution to potholes is not shovels and tarmac but more regulations and fines. And, collectively, the result is dysfunction in our national executive: an anxious, purposeless, neurotic cycling and re-cycling of thought, chronically un-translated into action — because those who thought of them lack the moral confidence to propagate their vision among more practical members of the polity.”

    A crisis of governance

    #135327
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Someone should break it to Gutfeld, it’s way, WAY worse than he thus far able to grok 😐

    I, along with a small number of good, kind & loving MEN, became aware of a rising tide of liars, cheats, thieves & murderers growing like a cancer within the.gov over 30 years ago, and with each passing week We were continually bewildered & *shocked* by obvious lack of integrity, morals & ethics insidiously resident across an ever growing aggregate of political spheres within the U$ofA…

    These “people” are in reality a psychopathic breed of parasite feeding off of the once Greatness of America, quickly surrounding themselves with toadies, sycophants & lackeys (operatives), infiltrating bureaucratic, .MIL & .GOV positions just as quickly as they achieved the *power* to do so…

    And all the while the electorate seemed to either not notice, or vocally supported this “transition” as the norm 🙄

    Keep voting (R) & (D), I’m sure that’ll show em!

    This *now* established CULTure of perfidious character despises everything/everyone good, decent & life affirming in that Made America Great, want it eradicated even if it means the end of the United States of America…

    And the gate keepers are *now* mostly cut from this malignant ideology, who believe that not only are they Above The Law, THEY ARE THE LAW.

    And they are laughing at any normal, law/tax abiding Americans that believe they can do *anything* about the CULTure of tyrannical insanity unfurling from Sea-To-Shining-Sea.

    They can’t be reasoned with, they can’t be shown the light of *truth*, they crave nothing less than the *total* destruction of The American Dream & the subjugation of all producers into the communal trough of shared equity, utter debasement of the middle class, rule-of-law, the *normal* family unit, the very fabric of society itself 😐

    Did you notice that disingenuous grin on the January 6th Lead Prosecutor’s face?

    THEY are laughing at you America, don’t you get the joke yet?

    .

    #135328
    Red
    Participant

    Copper is at the heart of everything electric. It is no exaggeration to say, that our entire “renewable, clean, green” future hinges upon its uninterrupted supply. In fact, according to a recently released report, we would need to mine more of it than what we did during the course of our entire written history, in order to transform the world economy to using electricity alone. This is not to mention the fact that this amount of material would only cover the build-out of the first generation of wind and solar power plants (together with the many electric engines, batteries, inverters, transformers etc) needed for the change. Where do we get all that copper from? A riddle? To some, maybe, but not for those who dare to look into the eye of the monster standing in between achieving our net zero dreams and the actual reality.
    ———————————————-

    Here comes the study I linked above into the picture. Let me list some tell tale facts and figures here to illustrate the task at hand. Our global reserves of copper amounts to some 880 million tons, however, a transition to an energy system powered by a combination of “renewables”, nuclear and hydro would require us to mine 4575 million tons — some five times the amount we have located so far. Considering 2019 production levels, and presuming we would magically discover the missing amount, we would still need 189 years to mine the needed amount for the first — I repeat: the first — generation, then run out of copper. Globally and completely.

    https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-copper-conundrum-3b98704602c8

    #135330
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    In US courts it is difficult to know who will be found guilty or not, unless you know who they support!

    No matter what the evidence is Democrats are ALWAYS innocent and Republicans are ALWAYS guilty.

    #135331
    Red
    Participant

    The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.

    https://www.racket.news/p/report-on-the-censorship-industrial-74b

    #135332
    Red
    Participant

    The slant of their article converges with a theme now sweeping over Europe and the entire Ukrainian-supporting Western structure. It is that slow-gnawing realization that has been dawning on these Euro-apparatchiks like a cold sweat over the past several weeks: that Ukraine’s coming offensives will not prove decisive in any way; that Ukraine has no real chance in the present or short-term future. That the only way to move forward without sustaining an historically humiliating loss is to ‘kick the can down the road’ and focus on building a pro-war coalition for the future, one that can hope to match Russia’s long term military-economic sustainment potential.

    And this is the general arc of Kofman-Lee’s desperate plea here. Couched in carefully mindful tones—so as not to cause too much panic or alarm amongst their decidedly fragile NAFO supporters—Kofman-Lee slowly build the case for why any sort of dramatic or decisive success should not be expected, and why instead the narrative needs to shift towards building long term sustainment infrastructure for Ukraine to be able to fight what is now likely to be a very long, drawn out conflict.

    Ukraine is also eager to demonstrate that, despite months of brutal fighting, its military is not exhausted and remains able to break through Russian lines.

    Indeed, what follows this operation could be another period of indeterminate fighting and attrition, but with reduced ammunition deliveries to Ukraine. This is already a long war, and it is likely to become protracted. History is an imperfect guide, but it suggests wars that endure for more than a year are likely to go on for at least several more and are exceedingly difficult to end. A Western theory of success must therefore prevent a situation in which the war drags on, but where Western countries are unable to provide Ukraine with a decisive advantage.

    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/analysis-of-kofman-lees-urgent-new

    #135333
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    And here we are:

    Le Kink

    And still: We could…

    I remember falling off the wagon the night of this concert. Not cuz Freddie passed, just cuz I’d been soper two years and felt I’d earned a holiday. *sigh*… 😉

    #135334
    zerosum
    Participant

    H. Clinton still continues to claim that the election was stolen from her
    • The Durham Coverup (Lee Smith)

    ————-
    Pot calling the kettle black (lying)

    “Murdoch, Chairman of Fox Corporation, in his own deposition was highly critical of the Fox News’ coverage, even going so far as to state news “news networks should not knowingly broadcast lies.””

    ———-
    The only kind Political/election interference that exist, is defined by the USA

    • Erdogan Accuses Biden Of Attempt To Topple Him (Cradle)

    “Musk defended what Faber said was the spreading of “conspiracy theories” by countering that pointing out that so many of these “conspiracy theories have turned out to be true”, and pointed to the Hunter Biden laptop suppression story, which was an example of “election interference.” “
    ————-
    Good find

    Net zero dreams and the actual reality

    https://thehonestsorcerer.medium.com/the-copper-conundrum-3b98704602c8
    The Copper Conundrum

    “Obviously, we have a very serious math problem here. Amounts of copper in the ground notwithstanding, and to make matters worse, peak oil supply will also play a major role here, as we are still mining using diesel power.”
    ———-

    #135335
    Oroboros
    Participant

    So in the Max Keiser/Tucker Carlson interview the other day, Max repeated something I heard him say over the decades, that pension fund managers and the dumbest of the dumb on Wall St and as useful over paid idiots they will buy bottomless amounts of financial junk and garbage and put that crap into your pension funds

    This has been going on for decades with the most toxic trash in the Financial Empire of Lies being stuffed into the pension funds

    This chart from above showing bad banking losses from bonds and debt securities MIRRORS what has happened in pension funds

    Actually pension funds are even worse than banking debt

    .

    So imagine when the bank debt explodes and millions turn to their ‘pensions’ as a fall back and they find out there is no fall back.

    Do you really think the Feds are capable of baling out the all the pension funds in the Empire of Lies?

    Do you actually think the FDIC can bailout ALL the bank deposits?

    Same deal

    .

    I still think the Sheeple, having lost all their money in the banks AND all their pension funds will still just sit their with their collective thumbs up their collective asses and literally close to nothing of substance.

    There is no fight left in the Sheeple People of the Empire of Lies, they will take any amount of abuse and ask for more please master.

    The anthem and banner and guiding motto to rally around for Duh’merica

    .

    #135336
    Oroboros
    Participant

    @Red

    Don’t agree at all with Kofman-Lee rant

    I’m with Col Macgregor’s assessment that Russia has 750,000 trained and very well equipped troops with more reserves building and that once Bakhmut falls and the Ukronazis have to fall back on a very thinly defensible third line, the Russians will roll over them like a cheap whore.

    The Russians have blown up the bridges connecting Romanian supply line to Odessa and they will cross the Dneiper to it’s west side and take Odessa from the north, Kharkov in the North and then straight at Kiev

    MacGregor just said that the Russians have destroyed over 10,000 armored personnel carriers to date. So how are the Ukronazis going to bring their poorly trained, exhausted, demoralized men to the front?

    Datsun pickup trucks and Uber rides?

    The two ammo dumps just blown up by the Russian looked like tactical nuclear explosions they were so big and one had the DU shells in it and the radioactive dust is all over the town and countryside where the ammo dump was located.

    The Ukronazis were low on ammo to begin with, now they are really low.

    Offensive need at least a three to one advantage to work.

    You mean the Ukronazis have 2 million trained and equipped troops to go at the Russians 700,000 troops with?

    Kofman-Lee is smoking his own belly button lint.

    Duh’merica can’t even recruit enough soldiers because of Woketurd nonsense

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osIctttStQU

    #135337
    Red
    Participant

    @oroboros
    “Don’t agree at all with Kofman-Lee rant”
    Nor I or Simplicius. That’s just it, Simplicius picks it apart quite nicely.

    #135338
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Jill Biden Excited To Hear About The Arrival Of Record Numbers Of Breakfast Tacos “ –BBee

    “Now that President Trump has been 100% exonerated by the Durham report, when will Adam Schiff be held accountable for the damage he has caused to our country?”

    All they have to do is vote to censure Shiff in Congress. That carries no penalties, is not law, and is strictly a Congressional Procedural thing. Nothing could possibly be easier, more legal, or more under their direct control. They won’t. Nor former/present members for knowing slander and inciting violence against other members, including members of the Supreme Court. They can’t even SIGNAL that they disapprove. It’s difficult to BE more weak than that, but this is the GOP, and there’s always tomorrow to find new ways to sell out.

    Why Shouldn’t the Election Be Called Into Question? (BN) “

    This includes the Katie Hobbs case that moved forward this week. Media reports “Everything was dismissed!” (except the stuff that wasn’t.) “There’s nothing to see!” (because we won’t look) and “it’s an impossible case”: she has to prove signatures were inaccurate. Um…guys? That’s all she’s been TRYING to prove. She spent the whole year just trying to GET to court. So I suspect she has evidence. Lower court tried to say “She waited too long.” Too long? Like the day after the election? Yup, can’t check before, no crime was committed, can’t check after because it’s too late. AZ SC said, “Um no, if that’s all you’ve got, that’s not logical. Proceed.” Which is the accurate decision for a change.

    Anyone want to guess why this, GA, Biden, Hunter, and Debt Ceiling are all happening on the same week? Same week as Bakhmut?

    “EU member states should spend more money”

    Great idea! Speaking of, I hear the U.S. Treasury is down to $50B. That’s like 7 days or something? So…we should go ask Ukraine for a little loan, right? Maybe just enough to tide us over a few weeks? They now have more money than we do: $150B vs $50B. And have eggs, free healthcare and pensions. But they are the master race, so it’s only fair.

    “• Aide Reveals Zelensky’s F-16 Wish List – Politico (RT)

    They can’t go because they’ll be blown out of the sky, de-frocking the entire U.S. military for 40 years. All our war sales are useless as a paper boat. Here’s the other problem: they shot those Patriot missiles yesterday and failed instantly. Like 30 went off in 5 minutes at $5M/per? And hit nothing? As I say, if it can stop 10, send 12, Problem solved. But the Patriot like other hardware – and hardware all over the world actually – it fits into a SYSTEM that readers at home don’t understand. That’s not just Money and logistics system — though that’s a problem — but it’s not operational WITHOUT F-16s or other air support they were designed for. And something else, I forget, maybe battlefield-level ground coverage too. Patriots do their thing. Aside from failing everywhere they’ve been used, Israel, Saudi, even failing to stop a slow-moving homemade kid’s drone in Yemen, they still wouldn’t work WITHOUT the F-16s.

    Which Russia will blow out of the sky.

    Speaking of, how are they hitting planes all of a sudden? I suspect Britain is in there with something, targeting them, until Russia can compensate for “it”, whatever “it” is.

    On the front, Ukraine is supposed to be attacking. Nada. Then no weapons depot. Ka-bloowie. So what’s happening is there are 100 small stories on the front and 99 of them are “Russia wins, takes territory.” Not fast, but you can’t shift the tide of war by losing every day.

    On F-16s, note they are trying for a slow escalation to prevent nuclear exchange, just like expanding NATO. Only to have the ENTIRE WEST attacking one nation: Russia, every day. Bleeding them for 20 years. Why should Russia agree?

    “It’s the women…
    “..telegenic female leaders

    As a(nother) P.R. scam they had to find some female psychopaths, which is much harder but not impossible. This is a foundational element of Feminism, that women can’t be women but must become men. More men than men, actually. (Because we hate men? And the patriarchy is bad so we have to do it harder? Unclear) That’s the only way to “prove”, to ‘succeed’ and to be ‘independent’. Prove to who, succeed at what and be independent from whom is undefined. Prove themselves to men, which means they remain subservient to them forever, is my conclusion. Succeed in making the “male” system worse and harder than even when men run it, and “independent,” finally free from heart, family, and all emotions. Love is really what was holding them back. If they expunge all love forever, I’m sure they’ll finally be real women. Especially if they use command, force, and violence. Nothing says “filling all female potential” like that.

    That is, being a worse man than a man every could.

    Well you tell me. This ties into their freedom for women to be whatever they want…so long as that is never, EVER mothers, wives, or support community and family at home. We will track you down to your house and SHOOT you if you express that female freedom. Freedom” means “free to obey corporations” and “Make money for us” dying childless and loveless in old age.

    Erdogan Accuses Biden Of Attempt To Topple Him (Cradle)”

    That’s ridiculous! Biden only does that in the United States! …As we see from Durham and ceaseless Congressional reports this month. See how weird this has become, when everything is a lie? He’s presented as crazy for suggesting a story THAT IS BEING REPORTED right this second, media-wide. And like 100x more likely in Turkey than Atlanta.

    ““not speak out in public on politically sensitive topics,”

    As yesterday’s ‘Wokefishing’, the ONLY thing in pitiful, empty lives is ‘the cause’. If you’re ONLY spending all day accusing and haranguing online, getting conservatives fired, YOU’RE A MERE POSER. If you ONLY attend every rally, but don’t get arrested, YOU’RE A MERE POSER. You don’t love cause and dear leader enough. YOU MUST POLITICIZE EVERYTHING, every word, every action, every thought, every conversation, every date, every person, every TV show, book, picture, flag, and event, past, present, and future. And even that is the BARE MINIMUM for your guilt, mister.

    What with Kim? EVERYTHING IS POLITICIZED to the mentally-ill political. Drinking beer has to be political. THEY make it impossible NOT to be political, then get mad about it SO THEY CAN HATE AND BULLY someone. Apparently Kim is glad WWII is over. So am I. So she got fired. Why do they hate women and people of color so much? Strong women with thoughtful opinions who speak their mind are their #1 enemy, killed on sight.

    Note being part of ‘The Club’ didn’t help. Sin is everywhere, you can never be Woke enough.

    “Elon Musk on Tuesday said that if his inflammatory tweets scare away advertisers “

    Why? Because CNBC is trying to CAUSE this. The issue doesn’t exist. They PRINTED it to MAKE it exist. “Why do you beat your wife?” “Why are you denying it?”

    “One Night” Brand: because One will put you out for the night.

    To be honest, I have never been able to grasp the essence of Gnostic “Sophia” in the slightest. Nor Mithras for that matter. I consider that quite a blind spot as I can’t believe it is that difficult. We have heard the names of Adam’s and Eve’s other children, should be more advertised. Same problems as before: a minute after born Abel “Did agriculture”? Um, that’s a really, really complex system, it already existed at your birth? How? By animal instinct? Similarly that Cain went off “To the cities” whoa, whoa: he’s the third human born but there are “cities” somewhere we have to worry about ten-thousands of men harassing him to make the Mark? Explain? In this case, Gen 2 was already still around for Noah which happened like a year later, I guess. None of these fit together, not even metaphorically.

    #135340
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “The two ammo dumps just blown up by the Russian looked like tactical nuclear explosions they were so big and one had the DU shells in it and the radioactive dust is all over the town and countryside where the ammo dump was located.”

    A most excellent reason for the Rus to evacuate the area.

    ***

    Incidentally, regarding the use of mRna injections on livestock a) we COOK the meat we eat, and b) the stomach is a difficult place for most pathogens: our stomach acids/bacteria see them mostly as part of dessert.

    Sure it’s stupid and will ultimately cause problems, but no, they are not “going after us through our food”.

    I suspect that meme was astroturfed to make antivax thinking sound foolish.

    ***

    #135341
    John Day
    Participant

    “Core Hypothesis” is up https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/core-hypothesis

    I spent about 4 hours yesterday afternoon carefully reading and considering this extensively researched and annotated hypothesis by The Ethical Skeptic. He observes that the amount of oceanic heating taking place is more than the atmospheric heating, and his physics-based thermal analysis indicates that it is not physically possible that the air heated the oceans that much. Additionally, the oceans have hot spots at the deepest trenches, volcanic trenches, and flows of hot water through the cold depths, to the surface, conveying heat to the surface, and speeding up the thermohaline flows, like the Gulf stream. Additionally, a couple of these hot spots, deep heat transfer areas, are under polar ice sheets, and cause local melting from the bottom of the ice, which has been hard to explain.
    The heat rising from the mantle, through conductive zones in the crust, also heats deep deposits of oil and other hydrocarbons, releasing CO2 and methane. This adds to the greenhouse gasses created by humans, and caused the CO2 to peak during the (northern) fall equinox, during COVID lockdowns in 2020, a time when human burning of fossil fuels was at a minimum.
    The Ethical Skeptic summarizes that most greenhouse gasses are coming from this process and China, and that the planetary surface-heat accumulation, mainly in the oceans, is more than can be explained from the gain and loss from the solar energy entering and leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, which he als analyzes in detail.
    He describes a mechanism for transfer of heat from the nickel-iron core of the earth, through the molten-lava mantle layer, and through the more-conductive zones of the crust. This process also concurs with changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, which is lessening, and with slowing of the rate of rotation, as the more dense and massive metal conveys outward away from the rotational center. This is a reversible process over time. The directional-driver of this process in forward or reverse is not described here. This appears to be a fleshing out or fleshing in of processes within the earth which have been black-boxes until now.
    From my viewpoint this does not contradict anthropogenic global warming or the space-weather analysis and catastrophic cycle, which Ben Davidson propounds. I am not able to build that particular theoretical bridge, but I am not the first to see that link, either. The Skeptic is somewhat aware of Davidson’s hypotheses, but has not explored them in any detail. I am interested to see if these analytical models might find common-ground over time.
    ​ ​The Climate Change Alternative We Ignore (to Our Peril)​ , The Ethical Skeptic​
    ​ ​Recent climate change may originate from structural and exothermic phase changes in the nickel-iron core of the Earth, and not primarily from man’s activity alone. Lattice structure (phase) changes in sloughed (shed) core material releases latent kinetic energy (heat) which flows to the asthenosphere and abyssal ocean depths, thereby becoming genesis of the majority of observed climate change and its long-associated geomagnetic dipole phenomena.

    The Climate Change Alternative We Ignore (to Our Peril)


    onions & garlic

    #135342
    John Day
    Participant

    Trump Vows To Release All JFK Assassination Files If Re-Elected​ “I released a lot, as you know. And I will release everything else.”

    Trump Vows To Release All JFK Assassination Files If Re-Elected

    RFK Jr. getting great mainstream press. a) Media follow the public. b) Media think he will win. c) Media have started telling the truth. d) People crave authenticity and truthtelling​ , Meryl Nass MD​
    https://merylnass.substack.com/p/rfk-jr-getting-great-mainstream-press

    ​ ​IRS Abruptly Removes Investigative Team from Hunter Biden Probe: Whistleblower Claim​ [kill the messenger]
    ​ ​In an alarming move that has raised eyebrows and suspicions about the integrity of federal agencies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) abruptly removed the entire team working on the high-profile tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden, first son of President Joe Biden.

    IRS Abruptly Removes Investigative Team from Hunter Biden Probe: Whistleblower Claim

    New York to Track Residents’ Food Purchases and Place ‘Caps on Meat’ Served by Public Institutions​ , Meryl Nass MD ​ ​(​G​ot your food needs secured?)
    https://merylnass.substack.com/p/new-york-to-track-residents-food

    #135343
    John Day
    Participant

    Russia Says It Took Out US-Supplied Patriot Missile In Hypersonic Strike On Kiev
    Russia’s military may have taken out a US-supplied Patriot anti-air battery in Ukraine, which if true would be a very significant first since the advanced Raytheon-made defense weapon was deployed there.
    This came as Ukrainian officials have cited an exceptionally dense attack on Kyiv overnight, which included cruise missiles and drones, and even allegedly Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Ukraine was hit by at least 18 missiles and nine drones were sent, with media reports saying some six ballistic missiles (including Kinzhal) were launched.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russia-says-it-took-out-us-supplied-patriot-missile-unit-hypersonic-strike-kiev

    ​Moon of Alabama (Germany) has this story also, with confirmatory details, but this comment is more detailed.​ Thanks Zerosum.
    ​ ​The main target was the US Patriot anti-aircraft missile system itself. As well as some military-industrial facilities and command posts, ammunition depots and fuel bases.
    ​ ​The main thing is that the “Patriot” could not shoot down our Kinzhal, which eventually destroyed the American battery. As for our other means of attack, the Ukrainian air defense system managed to shoot down only about 10% of our Kalibr missiles and Geran drones. 90% of them reached the goal.
    ​ ​So far, there is information that the sky over Kiev was covered by 1 Patriot battery with 16 missiles. Other batteries are only put into combat by the Americans. It is expected that there will be at least 4 such batteries.
    ​ ​It took one “Kinzhal”. The auxiliary vehicles and units included in the American battery finished off by Calibers.
    ​ ​This tactic was “prompted” to us by the Americans themselves. First wave were Geranium drones. They were spotted by American radars and thus gave away their positions. Next came anti-radar missiles that destroyed enemy radars. And after that, Caliber and Dagger flew over the already blind Patriot and other objects.
    ​ ​About the cost of the Kinzhal – there is information that it can cost from 30 to 70 million rubles, depending on the modification. But one Patriot missile is estimated at about $ 4 million – 4-8 times more expensive than our hypersonic ammunition. And the Ukrainians (or Americans?) fired from 16 to 30 missiles at targets. Well, the destroyed Patriot battery itself costs from $ 0.5 to 1 billion – this also depends on its modification.
    ​ ​Yes, our air defense specialists did not immediately manage to find an antidote for the British Storm Shadow, which in recent days have been hitting Lugansk. As is the case with the American Himars. Now, on some days, we shoot dozens of Himars from the sky. The same thing happened with Storm Shadow. We hit these 7 missiles with the help of Buk-3M, Tor, Pantsir-S and an electronic warfare system that forced foreign missiles to go far from the target.
    ​ ​By the way, Storm Shadow is a very expensive ammunition. The cost of 1 rocket – Storm $ 1.3 million.
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/05/ukraine-air-defense-lessons-/comments/page/2/#comments

    ​ ​Hungary outraged by leaked Ukrainian plans to blow up vital oil pipeline​ (​NATO i​s a great big exclusive club and you might not want to be in it.)
    ​ ​The Washington Post revealed that Ukraine was planning to blow up the Druzhba oil pipeline that transports crude from Russia to Hungary.
    ​ ​According to the leaked documents, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed at a February meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yuliya Svyrydenko that Ukraine should blow up the pipeline in order to incapacitate the part of the Hungarian energy infrastructure reliant on Russian oil.
    ​ ​Government spokesman Zoltán Kovács reacted in a tweet with a short question: “How is it possible that Ukraine is plotting against a NATO country??”

    Hungary outraged by leaked Ukrainian plans to blow up vital oil pipeline

    ​ ​Erdogan accuses Biden of attempt to topple him
    ​ ​Turkish government officials and journalists have accused the Biden administration of meddling in the Turkish election to defeat Erdogan after 20 years of his holding power
    https://thecradle.co/article-view/24823/erdogan-accuses-biden-of-attempt-to-topple-him

    ​ US regime-changed Pakistani populist-nationalist (former) Prime Minister Imran Khan is not dead yet, accused of 100 “crimes”, illegally arrested by the military when he showed up for court​, says that the military chief (traditionally the “real power” in Pakistan, under the CIA/MI-6) is ordering the attacks upon him.
    ​ ​Imran Khan’s arrest and Pakistan’s struggle for stability
    ​ ​The brief arrest of the former PM has again unleashed political turmoil in Pakistan, amid speculation that powerful military opponents may have orchestrated the unrest for their own interests.
    https://thecradle.co/article-view/24821/imran-khans-arrest-and-pakistans-struggle-for-stability

    #135344
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Geoff Lawton presents “Greening The Desert” about this Permaculture project in the Dead Sea Valley of Jordan, dealing with sand, dust and salt, to create an oasis with actual soil in 3 years. This is a 20 year overview.

    onions & garlic

    #135345
    Red
    Participant

    This statement alone should be enough to make one pause.
    “He was named a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader in 2020.”

    Who’s On Board
    Apeel Technology was founded in 2012 by James Rogers, a Ph.D. scientist out of U.C. Santa Barbara, who began searching for a solution to the perishability of the produce he noticed growing abundantly on his drive through the central coast of California; on the way to his Berkeley lab. He was named a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader in 2020.

    To date, Apeel has received 719 million dollars in funding from multiple sources, including Anne Wojcicki (23andMe), Katy Perry, Oprah Winfrey, GIC (the sovereign wealth fund of the government of Singapore), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, as well as a number of other investment firms and venture capitalists.

    Among their board members you will find Walter Robb; former co-CEO of Whole Foods and Senior Executive Partner at S2G Ventures (an Apeel investor), Yves Sisteron; Founding Partner at Upfront Ventures, (an Apeel investor) and Vijay Pande; an Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford, serves on the board of Scribe Therapeutics (a CRISPR company), founded Globavir Biosciences (an infectious disease start-up), and is General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (an APEEL investor).

    Apeel has already secured the following partnerships:
    Nature’s Pride (large importer of Europe’s avocados)
    Sage Fruit Co. (Washington State organic apple producer)
    Del Monte (avocados)
    Eco Farms (avocados)
    Del Rey (avocados)
    Horton Fruit Company (avocados)
    RV Aguacates (avocados)
    Alpine Fresh (asparagus)
    Beta (asparagus)
    Farm Direct Supply (asparagus)
    La Venta (asparagus)
    SiCar Farms (limes)
    Many other fruits and vegetables including tomatoes, leafy greens, cucumbers, raspberries, as well as citrus can use the Edipeel coating, with undoubtedly more produce being added in the future. Apeel’s website even offers a store locator to find where their products are carried near you.

    How Safe Is Safe? You Decide
    In October 2019, Apeel Sciences sent a notice of submission to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notification for their use of “a mixture of monoacylglycerides derived from grape seed.” The notice states:

    “Apeel Sciences has determined that a mixture of monoacylglycerides (i.e., monoglycerides or fatty acid monoesters of glycerol) derived from grape seed is Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), consistent with Section 201{s) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. This determination is based on scientific procedures as described in the following sections, under the conditions of its intended use in selected food. Therefore, the use of a mixture of monoacylglycerides derived from grape seed is exempt from the requirement of premarket approval.

    It should be noted that although the substance is referred to as ‘a mixture of monoacylglycerides’ throughout this document (which is consistent with the nomenclature used in GRN 648), the substance may also be identified as ‘mono- and diglycerides’ in the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and international regulatory bodies such as the Codex Alimentarius.

    Grapeseed oil, a mixture of triglycerides containing common dietary fatty acids, is extruded from grape seeds by mechanical pressing. The oil is processed to generate monoacylglycerides containing exclusively the same naturally occurring fatty acids in the grape seed oil in their saturated forms. Common dietary fatty acids that naturally occur in grapeseed oil (Kamel et al., 1985)—linoleic acid, oleic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, alpha-linolenic acid, and palmitoleic acids—are processed to generate the saturated forms…”

    This may sound innocuous or even healthy, but according to leading health experts, grapeseed oil is composed of polyunsaturated fats (PUFA’s), especially Omega-6 fatty acids and Omega-9 fatty acids, that when consumed in high quantities, or have a higher-than-ideal ratio to Omega-3 fatty acids, increased inflammation, hormonal imbalances, thyroid disorders, high cholesterol, and obesity.

    The notice continued:
    “The catalyst used to generate the monoacylglycerides and the neutralizing agent subsequently used to quench the catalyst are both safe and suitable for use in food. A liquid–liquid extraction with water and heptane or ethyl acetate4 is performed to remove unreacted glycerol, residual catalyst, and the residual neutralizing agent. The saturated forms of the naturally occurring fatty acids are then formed in the presence of hydrogen gas and a catalyst (20% w/w palladium hydroxide supported on carbon).”

    https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/apeel

    #135346
    Mr. House
    Participant

    @Dr. John and Red

    Have you figured out yet that Dr. Morgan is a gatekeeper?

    #135347
    Mr. House
    Participant

    though i do miss the commenting of tagio, his were the only ones worth reading.

    #135348
    John Day
    Participant

    @Red: Let’s not get the asparagus with that special coating for a few years,and see what more we learn, huh?

    #135349
    John Day
    Participant

    @Mr. House: I had to think before I realized you meant “Dr. Tim Morgan” at Surplus Energy Economics.
    I don’t think he is a “gatekeeper”, per se, but he does confine discussion to his area of expertise as an academic defense, which is customary in academics. He is following academic conventions in that regard.
    He is a clearly identified public figure, unlike The Ethical Skeptic, who is an anonymous public figure, and A Midwestern Doctor, who is the same.
    One should respect the welfare of others in maintaining their ability to carry on in their professions.

    #135350
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “One should respect the welfare of others in maintaining their ability to carry on in their professions.”

    Indeed, and one wonders if he was for excluding people from grocery stores and society in general if they didn’t do what they were told? I find his lack of curiosity concerning, and he essentially writes the same thing every week. We’ve known what he’s saying for a few years now so its not ground breaking. Most of what happened in 2020 was economic, so i find his defense of not discussing it lacking in credibility.

    #135351
    zerosum
    Participant

    The situation in the Bakhmut meat grinder is complicated, but everyone understands that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have actually lost control over the city. FORTIFICATIONS BUILT SINCE 2014.

    #135352
    jb-hb
    Participant

    boscohorowitz- we’re on some kind of wavelength. I was thinking about the Freddie Mercury Farewell/Tribute concert this morning as I was making coffee. This isn’t TO you, just the rant I was thinking about this morning. interesting we were both thinking of that concert.

    Brian May has, in his classy, restrained way, explained in multiple interviews how Queen “Lost America.” (the Bud Light moment of Queen, so to speak) This of course has to do with the Hot Space album and Freddie being gay, but Queen clearly do not understand what actually happened to this day… or they DO but don’t dare articulate it?

    What a crock of #%@@# the Queen movie was. A schlocky afterschool special of a movie full of fiction. Queen didn’t come off an estranged hiatus to perform a miracle at Live Aid. They’d just come off touring for The Works (7 months together), sharp as razor blades, rehearsed as #%&#. Of COURSE they blew all the other bands off the stage. (I cheered and clapped in the movie theatre anyway. Queen is a bit silly, we get that, we love you guys anyway)

    According to the movie, the media and public, in the EIGHTIES was so so concerned… is Freddie GAY???? O RLY? Uh, watch Live At The Rainbow 1974. Is there ANY QUESTION in ANYONE’S mind, apart from the most naive and retarded? Is that not a 2 hour long coming-out party, but only an aside, incidental to performing totally #%#&ing awesome rock? And this was what, after Queen II? Maybe Sheer Heart Attack? Very early on.

    The problem was not Freddie being gay. It was that, with Hot Space, Queen tried to be a synth based gay club music band, despite being fantastic at rock and horrible at synthesizer music and even worse at dance music. Plus, rock fans aren’t up for an album or concert of formulaic, shallow, stereotypical gay club music. The Kings had a HORRIBLE time opening for Jeff Beck, and they were still a kind of rock band and Switchin to Glide is an awesome song. But the Beck fans were there for straight-up ROCK god@%$# it, so they booed and thew beer bottles, and The Kings weren’t #%#&ing gay.

    ANY person who wasn’t up for a gay rocker was ALREADY out years ago, as far as Queen customers were concerned. There was ZERO crossover between homophobes and Queen fans making their albums go platinum and stadiums sell out year after year. But just like when Hillary lost, the flop of Hot Space was “Geez, this country is CHOCK FULL OF BIGOTS!!! It is the ONLY explanation!!!!”

    And Queen kept trying to make synth work for them EVERY subsequent album. Like they just couldn’t take the failure. The Works, It’s a Kind of Magic, The Miracle, Innuendo. This time it will work. (I bought them all, love Queen, but I’m not #$%&ing blind)

    Guys. GUYS. Freddie. YOU are the keyboardist of the band. Are you going to woodshed your keyboard chops back up to the piano and harpsichord awesomeness you showed us on Queen I and Queen II? No??? You guys going to do what U2 did before Zooropa, a #%#%ton of homework, a deep dive on current music to educate yourselves? No? You going to throw out the synths and do what you do best? No? Hire Trevor Horn to save you, make it work? No? Just be synth amateur dilletantes, do what your vague impression of “cool” is on a 10 year pop culture awareness lag? Like when GenX rockers in the 2000’s speak of now grey-haired Trent Reznor, sincerely awestruck at newness – “He plays the computer like it is an instrument” You’re missing a decade or two there, buddy.

    Queen “lost america” when Freddie decided to adopt the persona of a shallow one-note dude who goes to euro gay clubs. The particular jeans, belt, sleeveless shirt, haircut, mustache, behavior patterns, music infused with all that. The thing you identify with and adore, taken over, murdered, skinned, donned as a meatsuit, the murderer coming towards you arms outstreched saying “I am That Thing You Love, come give us a kiss.”

    It is so, so dissapointing when interesting, unique, edgy, fringe people just wanted to live a stereotype from an 80’s John Hughes movie. Like, you WANTED to be a prep, jock, cheerleader, but couldn’t hack it? Wanted to not only be it, but be the stereotype OF it? Becoming Borg was somehow more desirable than being an iconoclastic individual?!!1??! You were unique and absolutely %#$ing ROCKED. YES, Queen fans rejected all things anti-queen. Obviously. Of course. Therefore we will never come to America again. Decades on, Green Day regularly plays a recording of Queen to the Americans waiting in the stands before the concert and everybody sings along, belts out every word of the song, but you LOST america, did you? Idiots, we love you.

    #135353
    jb-hb
    Participant

    One of the reasons I turned Atheist:

    God allows evil and suffering in the world because he values our free will as a higher good OVER Good itself. Punishment, accountability can only exist with free choice, so does Hell make sense then? Maybe?

    But you don’t look up in the sky and see EVERY SINGLE GOOSE flying NORTH for the winter! You don’t see 100% fail rate. They fly South because of the damn cold every winter every year. Duh.

    What if I set 2 bowls in front of you. One filled with cereal, the other filled with broken glass. I pour in some milk, hand you a spoon. Which one do you eat from? Which one do 99.999999% of humanity eat from?

    But isn’t sin objectively BAD? Isn’t sin worse than eating broken glass? Isn’t a lacerated esophagous not as bad as eternal suffering and damnation, gnashing of teeth? But EVERYONE can recognize the bowl of glass and avoid it and “all men have sinned in the eyes of god” 100% fail rate. And objectively, sin is worse than glass.

    Who WOULD eat the broken glass? Someone with defective faculties. 100% match between people who cannot discern good from bad and defective faculties.

    How would choosing the objectively good thing over the objectively bad thing be deterinism, not free will? Obviously, anyone wants BETTER instead of WORSE. Why not make use of FUNCTIONING, NOT BROKEN faculties in your creation?

    But turn this around – instead of people at the bottom, look at people at the top. Because people CAN choose, and choose correctly EVERY TIME betwen cereal and broken glass.

    What if everyone keeps telling you you suck, your plan sucks, proportionally increasing to the extent you reveal your plan?

    If your plan was a GOOD one, all you’d have to do is TELL everyone. They’ll choose the cereal every time. Zooropa #%#&ing WORKED and Hot Space bombed. Not because idiot bigots didn’t understand Queen’s Genius Plan. If you have to obfuscate, lie (to yourself), cheat, steal, do every dirty trick in the book and people STILL detect what your plan is and STILL tell you it sucks, maybe you should be working on not sucking, not on making the sucky plan go through no matter what.

    So an open letter to TPTSNB (The Powers That Should Not Be) Stop trying to make Fetch a thing. Stop your damn dilletante synthesizing. Learn the instrument or throw it out. Do what DOESN’T suck and you can TELL everyone about it and get a gagillion people HELPING YOU, solving problems without your input, identifying problems you didn’t even know about and solving them without you ever knowing or needing to know. Your grandiose feelings do NOT equate to grand plans. People will AUTOMATICALLY side with what rocks and doesn’t suck. Geese DO fly south for the winter.

    Incidentally, I watched that Freddie farewell concert from start to finish live. It was a disappointment in a way. Robert Plant gasped and staggered across the stage in an inglorious fashion. Axl Rose/Elton John was rough and felt extremely awkward. Annie Lennox/David Bowie was a perfect match yet was milquetoast. The only truly good acts were Extreme, George Micheal, and Seal. Seal couldn’t hit the notes for Who Wants To Live Forever even with the song transposed, but there was something special about his performance that transcended his limitations. I figure the concert was more of an irish wake for the performers and fans, the party backstage throughout the concert must have been epic. I and the crowd I was watching it with loved it anyway.

    I just wish there’d been a similar event in America for all us Americans. Damn Yankees doing Gimme The Prize with Ted Nugent doing all the Kurgan bits. Styx, Queensrÿche, Kansas, Metallica, Rush… I’m sure there were QUITE a lot of North American bands that would have lined up begging to do homage. They could have brought in North American divas like Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston to sing songs like Who Wants To Live Forever or Somebody To Love. I suspect even the new guys like Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains would not have been too cool, would have wanted to pay homage too. We would have showed you just how “lost” America was.

    TPTB, why do you like things that suck, bro? Why not #%&#$ing rock? Why pretend we don’t like it when you Brang Teh Quote Unquote Rawk? Stop trying to make Fetch a thing. Look at an interesting city like New York or Paris. Like it was made by some greater intelligence, no? Convoluted, fascinating, interesting, etc? That was EVERYONE bringing their bit to the table. Just stop stopping people, stop doing lame uncool s#!@%, and freely enjoy the resulting awesomeness. Like Master Suzuki says – “I manage by not managing” Stop being pissed that Jordan Peterson or Carl Benjamin rock too. Instead, simply recognize what rocks and then get the glorious screaming applause and lighters held aloft treatment as a result. Pretty please.

    #135354
    Michael Reid
    Participant


    It’s been a month since I last posted on the theme of disenchantment, and a lively month at that. The cracks in America’s global empire have become increasingly visible around the world. Here at home the mentally challenged resident of the White House continues to blunder through a vague approximation of his constitutional duties while the coterie of neoconservative zealots that hand him his talking (or rather mumbling) points is busy trying to start more wars the United States no longer has the resources or the national unity to win. Donald Trump is basking in the success of his recent CNN town hall, Robert Kennedy Jr. is rising steadily in the polls as he campaigns to unseat Biden for the Democratic nomination—well, let’s just sum things up by saying that it’s a good time to go long on popcorn futures.

    When Nature Gazes Back

    #135355
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Other than quality, Picasso’s work has a pristine provenance, thus allows for comfortable hike in bidding race. Usually bought by the people as investment rather than love of art. Such art “donated” to a local museum shields the owner from myriad of tax liabilities that may arose from other “fun adventures” that moneyed engage and are allowed by the system that many on this site call as a “glitch” or “bad apple” in otherwise great contraption.

    #135356
    kultsommer
    Participant

    State of the Union (from today’s Unz review):

    The city of Baltimore has filed a federal lawsuit against car manufacturers Kia and Hyundai, joining a number of cities who say the companies created a public nuisance by making cars that can be easily stolen.

    I was almost to use similar to Germ’s sign-off.

    #135357
    jb-hb
    Participant

    City full of car theft

    Baltimore: something sucks about these CARS!

    Battlecruisers blowing up:

    Admiral Jellico: “There’s something wrong with our ships today!”

    #135358
    WES
    Participant

    I think I have finally discovered the real reason why the Ukrainians lost control of Bukhmut.
    A Wagner merc accidently revealed that NATO is not sending enough mayonnaise in their food care packages!
    I guess the mayonnaise is critical in holding things together and providing a satisfying taste experience!

    #135359
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Allow me to provide a solution that will theft-proof your car AND make the car cost less. This even works on Kia and Hyundai

    dfdsfdsafsa

    #135360
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    #135361
    zerosum
    Participant

    Training, from the beginning
    Are there Ukrainians that know how to stick shift and double clutch to be able to move the Patriot missile system.

    #135362
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Crisis and Chaos: Here’s What To Expect As the World Order Collapses

    Crisis and Chaos: Here’s What To Expect As the World Order Collapses

    #135363
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Doug Casey on Currency Debasement and Cultural Degradation

    Doug Casey on Currency Debasement and Cultural Degradation

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 47 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.