May 232023
 
 May 23, 2023  Posted by at 8:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Leonardo da Vinci Lady with an Ermine c. 1489-91

 

Peace Plans Are ‘Absolutely Wrong’ – UK PM (RT)
Austria Calls For Dialogue With Russia (TASS)
Hungary Opposes New EU Sanctions, Military Assistance To Ukraine (TASS)
Ukraine Won’t Join NATO Anytime Soon – Scholz (RT)
Fade to Black in Ukraine (Kunstler)
Chinese Delegation Visits Moscow For ‘Security Consultations’ (RT)
Russia Can Conduct Its Special Op For A Long Time – German Intel Chief (TASS)
No One Knows Who Blew Up Nord Stream – German Intel Chief (TASS)
Ukrainian Sabotage Attack On Belgorod Region (TASS)
The Western Media Disinformation Campaign: Fall of Bakhmut (Doctorow)
Russia Issues Dire Warning After US Approves Ukrainian Strikes On Crimea (ZH)
US ‘Highly Likely’ To Default – Yellen (RT)
Democrats Beg Biden to Make Them Constitutional Nonentities (Turley)
The Idiotic 14th Amendment Argument (Denninger)
GOP Pushes Back Against WHO Plans for ‘Global Governance’ (ET)

 

 

@RealPepeEscobar Waiting list for BRICS+: at 25 – and counting.
Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi, Senegal, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkiye, UAE, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

 

 

Nap Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Zelensky Bakhmut

 

 

Wilkerson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1660661957626826753

 

 

Blind Obama

 

 

Great Awakening

 

 

RFK jr

 

 

@WarClandestine: As Bakhmut falls and Ukraine’s air defenses are depleted, you’ll notice Zelensky is STILL not in Ukraine. Since May 3rd, he has been in Finland, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, and now off to Japan for the G7 Summi.t He’s hiding.

 

 

 

 

Warmonger midget Sunak.

Peace Plans Are ‘Absolutely Wrong’ – UK PM (RT)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has shot down calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine, declaring that Kiev should keep fighting for as long as it takes to get the peace “it deserves.” Ukraine’s British and American backers have rejected calls for peace on multiple occasions before. In a session of parliament on Monday, Sunak was asked by former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn whether he agreed with a ceasefire initiative put forward by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and backed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Pope Francis. Corbyn added that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated earlier on Monday that “a ceasefire is not a peace,” but without one, “this war will go on and get worse and worse.”

“I could not disagree with him more,” Sunak replied. “A ceasefire is not a just and lasting peace for Ukraine. Russia has conducted an illegal and unprovoked invasion … and the right and only response to that is for Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine.” “All plans masquerading as peace plans,” he continued, “are in fact attempts just to freeze the conflict where it is, are absolutely wrong and they should be called out.” Sunak’s position is in line with that of the US, where Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in December that any ceasefire that involved freezing battle lines would lead to “a phony peace.” At the time, Sunak stated that a ceasefire would be “completely meaningless,” and that the UK would only accept the withdrawal of Russian troops from “conquered territory.”


Ukraine considers the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye – which voted to join the Russian Federation last year – its territories, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has vowed to bring all four back under Kiev’s control. Zelensky has also promised to recapture Crimea, which voted to join the Russian Federation in 2014. However, American military officials have publicly stated that retaking Crimea is beyond Ukraine’s capability, and Kiev’s long-anticipated spring counteroffensive against Russian forces has thus far failed to materialize. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military suffered the destruction of more than two dozen of its brigades in the city of Artyomovsk/Bakhmut since last October, only to lose the city to the Wagner private military company over the weekend. Nevertheless, Sunak claimed in parliament that Russian forces are “failing on the battlefield,” and declared – as he and US President Joe Biden have on many occasions – that he would “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

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“..Vienna continued to communicate with Moscow through informal channels..”

Austria Calls For Dialogue With Russia (TASS)

Vienna maintains an informal channel of communication with Moscow and calls for dialogue with Russia despite the Ukrainian conflict, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said. “The West should continue talking with Russia the way the US government is doing,” he pointed out in an interview with Germany’s Die Welt newspaper published on Monday. According to Schallenberg, international platforms such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations should be used for further talks with Russia. Austria’s top diplomat sees it as “the global responsibility” of Western countries. Schallenberg emphasized that Vienna continued to communicate with Moscow through informal channels. “Russia has not disappeared from the map, remaining the EU’s biggest geographical neighbor and the world’s major nuclear power,” he added.

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Keep your foot down this time.

Hungary Opposes New EU Sanctions, Military Assistance To Ukraine (TASS)

Budapest opposes a number of key provisions in the 11th package of sanctions on Russia developed by the European Commission and will not support giving any additional military assistance from the European Peace Facility until its OTP Bank is taken off of Ukraine’s list of international war sponsors, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday. He recalled that EU countries want to increase military assistance to Ukraine from the European Peace Facility to the tune of 500 million euro. “We demand the Ukrainians remove OTP from the list of international war sponsors. Until that happens, we will not give our consent to allocate these 500 million euro to EU countries as compensation for their spending on weapons to Ukraine,” he told Hungarian journalists during a break in the meeting of the EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The top diplomat’s press conference was broadcast live on his Facebook page (Facebook is banned in Russia due to its ownership by Meta, which has been designated as extremist). On May 4, Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention put Hungary’s OTP Bank Group, which continues to operate in Russia, on the list of international sponsors of war. Szijjarto slammed this decision as “scandalous and unacceptable.” As of today, he stressed, Hungary’s largest bank, OTP, “had not violated a single national or international law” and its blacklisting in Ukraine is absolutely illegal. The top Hungarian diplomat also recalled that his country’s government was against weapons supplies to Ukraine in general and would not budge from this position. “Weapons supplies are fraught with the risk of escalating the war and the longer this war continues, the more people will die,” he stressed.

Touching on the 11th package of anti-Russian sanctions, which was also a topic of discussion for the EU foreign ministers, the Hungarian minister noted, “Brussels should have learned a lesson from the consequences of the sanctions.” “Sanctions are more harmful to Europe than they are to Russia and I think that the 10th package of sanctions should not be followed by an 11th, which would turn out to be a true test for Europe in general and the economy of European countries,” he said, adding that Hungary opposed additional restrictions for European companies in terms of trading in Russian goods, as well as sanctions on Chinese companies suspected of cooperating with Russia. He also reiterated that Hungary will oppose any EU sanctions that would restrict cooperation with Russia in the field of nuclear energy. “Despite the pressure that’s being exerted on us, we will strongly oppose any kind of sanctions affecting the nuclear industry, because that concerns Hungary’s energy security. In no case will we risk the security of Hungary’s energy supply,” he said.

Apart from that, Szijjarto stressed that Budapest will continue to demand that the Ukrainian authorities restore the rights of the Hungarian minority in the Zakarpattia Region. Until this problem is settled, Hungary will not support Kiev’s aspirations to integrate into the European Union, he pledged. Summing up the results of the ministerial meeting, the Hungarian minister noted that no decision had been made about using the European Peace Facility to further finance weapons supplies to Ukraine. “No decision on sanctions was made either,” he said. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said earlier on Monday that the 11th package of sanctions could be agreed before the next EU ministerial meeting in June. Talks on this topic continue. At the same time, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has admitted that not only Hungary but a number of other countries object to the 11th package.

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The Germans are not ready to declare war on Russia.

Ukraine Won’t Join NATO Anytime Soon – Scholz (RT)

Ukraine will most likely not be able to become a NATO member state in the foreseeable future as it does not meet a number of requirements for admission yet, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said. Earlier this month, the head of the US-led military bloc, Jens Stoltenberg, declared that all member states had agreed to welcome Kiev, but only if and when it vanquished Moscow’s forces. In an interview with Germany’s Die Welt published on Monday, Scholz assessed that, for the time being, Ukraine’s Western backers should focus on helping the country “defend its land.” In the future, security guarantees for Kiev will also need to be discussed. “But we are a long way away from there,” he added.

When asked whether he would theoretically support Ukraine’s accession to NATO after its military conflict with Russia was over, the chancellor claimed that it was “clear to everyone that this doesn’t stand on the agenda anytime soon.” One of the reasons for that, according to Scholz, is that “there is a whole range of requirements belonging to NATO’s criteria that Ukraine can’t fulfill at present.” Earlier this month, dpa news agency, citing a YouGov poll, reported that some 54% of Germans oppose the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, with only 27% in favor. Meanwhile, also this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the Washington Post that “all NATO allies agree that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance.” He, however, refused to offer any timeline for this.


According to the official, the US-led military bloc is currently helping Kiev “transition from Soviet-era equipment, doctrines and standards” and become “interoperable with NATO forces.” In April, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed that most Europeans would disapprove if NATO did not extend a “well-deserved invitation” to join the alliance. The Ukrainian leadership made it clear that it expected to see progress on the issue during an upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania in July.

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“..our country is bypassing the banana republic stage of dissolution and depravity and steaming quickly into a Hieronymus Bosch dystopia..”

Fade to Black in Ukraine (Kunstler)

Well, the folks running things in America — that is, the scores of unelected bureaucratic satraps guarding their nests throughhout the Okefenokee inside-the-Beltway, especially the gator-pit known politely as the Intel Community — decided to subject Mr. Trump to a one-man version of the exquisite torment intended for Russia, Russia, Russia: pain, ignominy, and ruin. They’re still at it six years later, since the relentless Mr. Trump will not give up his crusade to take back the White House and defenestrate all those attempting to defenestrate him. His enemies have captured all the levers of legal power, and yet, amazingly, they can come up with nothing but the most rinky-dink charges to railroad him in captured jurisdictions.

This internal political conflict in the USA has driven the populace plumb insane, while it has rendered our institutions rancid and left us subject to a pathocracy hiding behind a laughably fake chief executive. After a year-plus of America’s genius scheme to maintain world dominance, Russia is doing really well, thank you, in constructing a geo-economic framework for trade that will not be subject to the pranks of USA-led Western Civ. Russia is a nation of people who regard themselves as men and women, the toils of gender confusion happily absent. Ditto race hustles. Ditto banking Ponzis. After two-plus years of “Joe Biden” — well, our country is bypassing the banana republic stage of dissolution and depravity and steaming quickly into a Hieronymus Bosch dystopia of financial, social, psychological and moral ruin. Every official utterance is a lie. Everything’s broken or breaking. And seemingly, on-purpose.


The nagging question, of course, is on whose purposes? And why is Mr. Zelensky flitting from one country to another the past month? Because the game of Let’s You and Him Fight is drawing to a close and Mr. Z may find himself fatally unpopular back on the home-front. He has managed to send upward of a hundred-thousand young Ukrainian men to their deaths in the meat-grinder, and perhaps a million more have hightailed it for other countries. Ukraine will now be a land of mostly women, children, and old folks — with just enough surviving soldiers left looking to hunt down the comedian who turned Ukraine into another one history’s sick jokes.

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“The high-profile security talks, which are held annually, are an “integral and in-demand element of the Russian-Chinese comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation..”

Chinese Delegation Visits Moscow For ‘Security Consultations’ (RT)

Top Russian and Chinese security officials met in Moscow on Monday to discuss cooperation between the two nations in various areas, the press service of Russia’s Security Council has said. “The prospects for joint efforts in the law enforcement sphere, in various areas of operational and service activities have been considered. Special attention was paid to plans for cooperation between the Russian Guard and the People’s Armed Police of China, as well as between financial intelligence [services],” the statement said.The talks involved an unspecified number of representatives of various ministries and government agencies of the two countries, according to the Russian side. The two sides discussed various issues, including “international information security,” as well as “contacts between supervisory and investigative bodies” of the two nations.

The Chinese delegation was led by Chen Wenqing, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo. He was recently named secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, the country’s top security post with oversight of judges, police, and intelligence. Russia’s delegation was led by Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev. The high-profile security talks, which are held annually, are an “integral and in-demand element of the Russian-Chinese comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation,” the press service said. This was the second major Russia-China security event in just over a month. In mid-April, China’s newly appointed Defense Minister Li Shangfu visited Moscow, where he met his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu, President Vladimir Putin, and other top officials during a three-day stay in Russia.


Li said at the time that the trip was intended to underscore Beijing’s “firm determination to strengthen strategic cooperation between the militaries of China and Russia.” “After my appointment as the defense minister, my first visit is made to Russia in order to demonstrate to the outside world the high level of Chinese-Russian relations,” he said ahead of the talks with Shoigu.

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“..the intelligence service does not see that the conflict has somehow shaken the authority of the Russian state.”

Russia Can Conduct Its Special Op For A Long Time – German Intel Chief (TASS)

Russia is capable of continuing its military operation in Ukraine ‘for a long time’, President of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) Bruno Kahl said. “Russia, as before, remains capable of leading <…> [its special military operation] for a long time,” the DPA news agency quoted the intelligence chief as saying. Kahl also noted that the intelligence service does not see that the conflict has somehow shaken the authority of the Russian state. When asked whether the BND was aware that a military operation would certainly begin, he said: “Fourteen days before the start <…> [of the conflict] we recorded phenomena that could hardly be interpreted in any other way.”.

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Keep the questions alive. Forever.

No One Knows Who Blew Up Nord Stream – German Intel Chief (TASS)

No intelligence agency is currently able to clearly name those responsible for the Nord Streams sabotage, President of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) Bruno Kahl said. “No country, no intelligence agency in the world is currently able to attribute this (the Nord Streams sabotage – TASS) to anyone in particular,” he said, “Maybe this will change, there are some notable successes in the investigation.” Kahl recalled that the site of the sabotage is a seabed, which makes the work of investigators much more difficult. According to him, the investigation is being conducted “in different directions.” “I do not exclude that there will be a success that will make one of the options more likely and the others less likely,” the intelligence chief added. On May 21, the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung reported that at least two Ukrainians may have been involved in the explosions at the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines.


The German Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office on Monday did not comment on this information when asked by TASS. The agency said that the investigation is working on all the evidence to establish the facts, but it is impossible to provide additional data at the moment. In turn, State Secretary Steffen Hebestreit, commenting on the information of the Suddeutsche Zeitung, said that the German government does not intend to speculate about the perpetrators of the Nord Stream sabotage. On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported “unprecedented damage” on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian prosecutor general’s office opened a case on charges of international terrorism.

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Allegedly they sent in 50 men. 39 were killed, 5 arrested.

Ukrainian Sabotage Attack On Belgorod Region (TASS)

A Ukrainian sabotage group infiltrated the Grayvoron District of the Belgorod Region on Monday, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. According to the latest data, the Russian military and security forces are taking measures to eliminate the enemy and are driving it away from the Russian territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been briefed about the situation. TASS has put together the highlights of what has been reported about the attack as of now.

– The infiltration by Ukrainian saboteurs was reported by Gladkov. He said the Russian military, border guards and the servicemen of the National Guard and the Federal Security Service are taking “necessary measures to eliminate the enemy.” – Before that, the governor said two people were injured in a shelling of the village of Glotovo of the Grayvoron District. He said one of the casualties, a woman, who suffered wounds from a mine explosion, had been taken to a hospital in serious condition. The other person, a man, was in a condition of medium gravity. – The Kremlin later confirmed that a Ukrainian sabotage group had tried to force its way into the Belgorod Region, and the group is now being driven away from the Russian territory and eliminated. – Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are sufficient forces and equipment on the scene to combat the saboteurs. He said Putin had been briefed about the incident.


– Peskov said the goal of the sabotage attack is “to divert attention from the Bakhmut area and reduce to a minimum the political effect from the loss of Artyomovsk by the Ukrainian side.” The Russian Defense Ministry said into the night of May 21 that the town in Donbass had been fully liberated. – The Russian Defense Ministry has regularly reported stopping Ukrainian sabotage attacks in Russia’s new regions: The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. – The previous sabotage attack took place in the Bryansk Region on March 2. Two people were killed, and a boy with the date of birth in 2012 was wounded at the time. The boy was able to lead two girls that were nearby out of harm’s way. – Putin then called the attack on villages outside Bryansk a terrorist attack.

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“Given their losses in men and materiel defending Bakhmut, the surrender of the city to the Russians will be a great blow to Ukrainian fighting morale when it is finally admitted..”

The Western Media Disinformation Campaign: Fall of Bakhmut (Doctorow)

Midday yesterday, 20 May, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group which did most of the fighting for Bakhmut on the ground, claimed total victory. In the evening, President Vladimir Putin announced to the Russian public that Bakhmut was taken. Joyous messages of congratulations filled the internet message services in Russia as the broad public celebrated a victory as iconic as the Battle for Stalingrad. Meanwhile, the defenders of the Western public against Russian “disinformation” were hard at work, straining their brains to find what to say. This morning’s New York Times still speaks of the battle for Bakhmut as undecided, pointing yet again to the Ukrainian hold on the flanks.

Given their losses in men and materiel defending Bakhmut, the surrender of the city to the Russians will be a great blow to Ukrainian fighting morale when it is finally admitted. So will the fate of their Commander in Chief General Zaluzhny who, according to Russian sources, has been hospitalized for the past two weeks and remains in critical condition after falling victim to a Russian strike on a provincial command center which killed most of the high officers around him. If nothing else, this speaks to the amazing success of Russian military intelligence directing their firepower.

Meanwhile, Western media attention to Ukraine is conveniently redirected at the nonstop travels of President Zalensky who went from his European tour on to the Middle East, where he attended the meeting of the Arab League, and thence via French military jet to the G7 gathering in Hiroshima where he held talks with fellow heads of state and joined them for the obligatory group photos. All the talk was about when the U.S. will formally give its consent to the dispatch of F16s to Kiev. For the disseminators of Western disinformation this is a wonderful distraction from a war that clearly is going badly for Kiev and in particular a distraction from the counter offensive that looks less likely with each passing day of Russian military strikes on the command centers and weapons stores of the Ukrainian side.

The plume of radioactive smoke and ash that rose from the Khmelnitsky store of British depleted uranium artillery shells in Western Ukraine after a Russian missile strike, just like the extensive damage to the Patriot air defense installation near Kiev by a Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missile tell us all what will be the fate of future Western arms deliveries to Ukraine. It is an interesting question how much longer the Ukrainian military or politicians will put up with their high flying, good life President while the country is well on its way to hell.

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If Kiev attacks Crimea, Russia will flatten Kiev.

Russia Issues Dire Warning After US Approves Ukrainian Strikes On Crimea (ZH)

Russia has issued another stern warning related to further potential Ukrainian attacks on Crimea. “Strikes on this territory are considered by us as an attack on any other region of the Russian Federation. It is important that the United States is fully aware of the Russian response,” Moscow’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned Sunday. This was in response to an earlier weekend statement by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to CNN. He said while speaking from the G7 summit in Japan over the weekend, “we have not placed limitations on Ukraine being able to strike on its territory… What we’ve said is that we won’t enable Ukraine with US-systems to attack Russia. And we believe Crimea is Ukraine.” However, the US has consistently denied that it has OK’d Ukraine using US-supplied advanced weaponry to mount such attacks.

Antonov further stated on Telegram in response that “the unconditional approval of strikes on Crimea using American and other Western weapons” alongside the move among Western allies to supply Ukraine with jets “clearly demonstrate that the United States has never been interested in peace.” He warned the US administration against “thoughtless judgments on Crimea, especially in terms of ‘blessing’ the Kiev regime for air attacks” on the peninsula. Per Russian state media, other Kremlin officials weighed in even more forcefully, warning that even nuclear disaster could be the result: “Sullivan’s remarks likewise triggered outrage from Crimean Deputy Prime Minister Georgy Muradov, who opined that by allowing Ukraine to use US-made planes to target the peninsula, the White House had “agreed to unleashing a nuclear war.”


“The official recalled that Crimea hosts Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. “An attack on one of the pillars of Russia’s strategic security legally obliges our country to use all available means to prevent it from being undermined.” Russia has also recently accused Ukrainian forces of using UK-supplied long range rockets which are capable of hitting inside Russia. This is also a cause for concern in terms of possible Russia-NATO direct escalation: “Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of more than 250 kilometers, give Ukraine the capacity to strike well behind Russian front lines and as far as Moscow-occupied Crimea,” US state-funded RFERL underscores, while adding that “British media reports said Kyiv had promised not to use the missiles to strike inside Russia’s territory.”

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“Congress has raised borrowing limits 78 times since 1960.”

US ‘Highly Likely’ To Default – Yellen (RT)

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has doubled down on her warnings about the nation’s debt ceiling, saying the federal government will run out of money to pay its bills as soon as June 1 unless Congress enables it to increase borrowings. “It is highly likely that Treasury will no longer be able to satisfy all of the government’s obligations if Congress has not acted to raise or suspend the debt limit by early June, and potentially as early as June 1,” Yellen said on Monday in a letter to US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Yellen has repeatedly warned that Washington is headed for default on its financial obligations, barring additional borrowing authority from lawmakers, after the national debt soared to its $31.4 trillion statutory limit. The US Treasury is running out of cash after the national debt reached the cap in January.

“If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests,” Yellen told McCarthy, a California Republican. The Treasury secretary said it’s impossible to predict the exact date when the money will run out. The government will likely have to start choosing which bills go unpaid by June 15, if not sooner, Yellen said on Sunday in an NBC News interview. Major obligations include interest payments on existing borrowings, Social Security payments to elderly and disabled Americans, bills from defense contractors, and the paychecks of US military personnel and other government employees. The US government has a projected deficit of $1.4 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office, meaning its outlays exceed revenue by around $117 billion each month. The nation ran up $6.2 trillion in debt in its first 226 years of existence, then saw the total balloon fivefold in just the past two decades. Congress has raised borrowing limits 78 times since 1960.


McCarthy and President Joe Biden resumed talks on Monday, but so far failed to resolve the debt impasse. Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have proposed increasing the debt cap by $1.5 trillion while reducing growth in federal spending to address the root cause of the crisis. The president has countered that he’s unwilling to negotiate on the debt ceiling, but he’s open to having a separate conversation about spending once the borrowing cap is raised. Past political clashes over the debt ceiling have shown that waiting until the last minute to reach a settlement can rattle markets, reduce consumer confidence, raise borrowing costs and threaten the nation’s credit rating, Yellen said in Monday’s letter. In fact, the Treasury’s debt costs have already increased for bonds maturing in June. “I continue to urge Congress to protect the full faith and credit of the United States by acting as soon as possible,” Yellen said.

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“These are rational leaders whose desire to nullify their own existence would have seemed entirely implausible to the Framers.”

Democrats Beg Biden to Make Them Constitutional Nonentities (Turley)

Roughly 25 years ago, many of us were shocked by the discovery of a home full of bodies of dozens of people laying in bunk beds, wearing jumpsuits and identical black-and-white Nike Decade sneakers. They were the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult who, with their leader, drank a lethal mix of phenobarbital and vodka to gain entry to “Heaven’s Gate” with the passing Hale-Bopp comet. Few of us could understand how rational people could believe their leader that it was necessary to shed their earthly bodies to gain access to an orbiting alien space craft. Few would buy such a pitch, but these people did. Some of the men even castrated themselves as a sign of their faith.

This week, Heaven’s Gate came to mind as I watched members of Congress line up to take a step that runs against every assumption of self-preservation in Madisonian democracy: They sought to make themselves nonentities. They called upon President Joe Biden to reject their very institutional existence, discard the separation of powers and unilaterally borrow and spend federal money. At one event, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a letter to Biden on behalf of himself and nine Democratic senators “to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.” He was joined in this by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), among others. Obviously, these are not Nike-wearing cultists, but that only makes their actions all the more inexplicable. These are rational leaders whose desire to nullify their own existence would have seemed entirely implausible to the Framers.

A presidential “power of the purse,” however, is a fiction, only marginally more credible than the Hale-Bopp comet’s power to whisk human souls away into space. Their argument for it is based on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” The drafters of this amendment did not want Congress to simply dismiss its obligations to pay off the Union’s debts from the Civil War. Although the amendment is not limited to those debts, it has nothing to do with debt ceilings set by Congress. Default, after all, is not a denial of the validity of debt, but rather a refusal or failure to pay debts in time despite their validity.

Courts have long left it to the political branches to work out such differences in what is often a game of chicken with default. Moreover, as University of Virginia law professor Saikrishna Prakash recently pointed out, there is more than enough federal revenue coming in each month for Biden to avoid default by paying the interest on the debt under existing federal law. That may cause temporary problems for other spending priorities — acute problems, even — but it hardly rises to the level of a constitutional crisis. Instead, these senators are suggesting that a president does not need congressional approval to borrow and spend trillions of dollars, even though the Constitution explicitly grants both of those powers to Congress alone. They also claim that, by demanding budget cuts as a condition of permitting further borrowing, the House is violating the 14th Amendment.

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“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned”

The Idiotic 14th Amendment Argument (Denninger)

Can we stop with the crazy? Here’s the clause that has CNN and a bunch of other wide-eyed nuts salivating: Section 4: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.” Key: Authorized by law.

All spending must originate in the House (per the Constitution.) However, Congress is the source of such limitation as well, and nothing in that clause — or anywhere else in the Constitution says that Congress may not bind the execution of said spending based on the receipt of taxes to offset any debt that may otherwise be required. This is the same thing your bank does. You have $100,000 of income. You also have a credit card with a $20,000 credit line. If you keep invading it on the premise that you expect to earn $110,000 this year, because you are paid partially on commission or bonus, the bank can refuse to increase the line if that income does not materialize. Thus, when you reach the $20 large that’s all there is.

Likewise you can execute a Will that says “you get $1 million dollars provided you take care of my dog, including anything it may require to be healthy and live its best life, until its natural death.” This a two-part test and it is perfectly legal. This sort of clause is literally all over estate plans and business contracts: You get X provided you do both Y and Z. If you do not wish to do either of Y or Z then you don’t get X. Congress has done this by enacting the debt ceiling. Neither Congress or the Executive can accurately predict how much tax revenue will come in. Taxes, of course, come from economic activity; no activity, no taxes. The CBO projects that revenue will be “X” and so does Treasury, but those are guesses because they rely on things that have not yet occurred and as such are inherently inaccurate.

Congress has set in place a two-part system for this. The first is Appropriations, which are authorizations to spend and levies to be taxed. The second is the debt ceiling, which is a hard limit on the difference between the two over time. No, Treasury cannot go around this by claiming something in the 14th Amendment makes the Appropriation sacrosanct. Congress has the authority under the Constitution, and has exercised it, to control the purse. To be enabled by law and thus immune from being questioned, debt that is issued by Treasury must be (1) issued for an appropriated purpose AND (2) be within the debt ceiling in effect at the time of said issue. If it is then under the 14th Amendment it is valid.

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Does the WHO really think it can push this through?

GOP Pushes Back Against WHO Plans for ‘Global Governance’ (ET)

House Republicans took to the podium on May 17 to condemn the Biden administration’s negotiation of global pandemic agreements that they say will grant additional power to the World Health Organization (WHO) and centralize authority in an organization they say failed the American public during the COVID pandemic. Shortly thereafter, on May 19, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued a report to member nations stating that, while the “re-emergence of epidemic-prone diseases continues to accelerate,” the WHO’s mandate regarding “health emergencies” must extend beyond pandemics to include hunger, poverty, ecological degradation, climate change, and social and economic inequalities.

Kolakusic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1660567427778838528

The Director General wrote that member nations must establish a “global architecture for health emergency preparedness, prevention, response, and resilience (HEPR),” which includes “global governance, financing and HEPR systems.” But GOP lawmakers disagreed with the WHO. “International law does not trump our Constitution,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) said at a Capitol press conference. “Biden cannot force Americans to follow laws and regulations not passed by our own federal government.” “The World Health Organization pandemic treaty is very vague, it affects our sovereignty, and it could be exploited to tell Americans what kind of health care they need in the event of a global pandemic,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) said. The public forum was organized by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and included 18 House members.


Ambassador Pamela Hamamoto, on behalf of the United States, is currently negotiating terms of the WHO Pandemic Accord, which is scheduled to be signed by the 194 WHO member nations in 2024, as well as amendments to International Health Regulations (IHRs), also under the auspices of the WHO. In sum, these negotiations are intended to produce legally binding treaties and agreements that will coordinate a united response among member nations during a “health emergency,” with much of the decision-making authority vested in the WHO. According to these agreements, the WHO would have the authority to, for example, declare when a pandemic is in effect and to coordinate medical supply chains to ensure equitable distribution among member nations. The agreements also speak to global coordination between the WHO and national health authorities like the CDC to set health policies, and coordination among governments on issues like fighting “misinformation.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 


Heliconia rostrata (also known as hanging lobster claw or false bird of paradise) is an herbaceous perennial plant with peculiar downward-facing flowers

 

 

Cat walk

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle May 23 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 47 total)
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  • #135626

    Leonardo da Vinci Lady with an Ermine c. 1489-91   • Peace Plans Are ‘Absolutely Wrong’ – UK PM (RT) • Austria Calls For Dialogue With Russia (TA
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle May 23 2023]

    #135628
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    I’m greatly amused by the nonplussed reaction by so many normies to Russia capturing Bakhmut/Artyomovsk.

    From the perspective of an unfortunate recipient of exclusively MSM reporting, what’s happened there is the equivalent of:

    15 – Love to Ukraine
    30 – Love to Ukraine
    45 – Love to Ukraine
    Game set and Match to Russia

    Total misalignment between what they have been told is going on and what has actually happened – which is causing all sorts of cognitive pain – mostly manifesting in anger and denial. Strangely many seem to have doubled down on their credulity of Pro-Ukie propaganda.

    Like Hitler supposedly moving imaginary Panzer divisions around his maps just before the fall of Berlin, many people seem to genuinely believe that The Ukies have lured Russia into Artyomovsk in order to surround and destroy them – with massive forces that, it hardly needs to be said, show no signs of actually existing. I guess the half-dozen UAF squaddies still holed up in some derelict shed on the outskirts of town are about to spring into action any minute now and push Wagner back via a ‘Flanking manoeuvre’ that Zelensky and his mob are now touting. Or something like that.

    #135631
    aspnaz
    Participant

    “I could not disagree with him more,” Sunak replied. “A ceasefire is not a just and lasting peace for Ukraine. Russia has conducted an illegal and unprovoked invasion … and the right and only response to that is for Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine.”

    The way Britain handed back all the goodies they stole from the world and put in their museaums? The UK is so full of shite they need an Indian curry to get rid of it.

    #135632
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Austria: News is Austria and Germany also very moderate to cold this year. Not outrageous, but enough to matter and breaks the trend, just like here. Like no tomatoes, everything slow, need to get infrastructure (greenhouses) to cope, delayed a month in planting them, etc. Wow, no headline news for that? You’d think it would be 30-point type since it would mean we’re all saved! From becoming Venus. And also from dying trying to transform the world to Green to avoid becoming Venus.

    Cooling: it’s a thing that never, ever happens. Just like everything else in the world. Yeah, just yesterday Algorythm post says “We didn’t really lose Bakhmut”. AYFKM? Already? All-rightie, then.

    For help, look to this item. https://lanternnet.com/product/dietz-2500-jupiter-cold-blast-lantern/ 75-hour kerosene lantern, which were lit to take the chill off greenhouses. It’s a safe, pleasant, and mild way to cope with temperatures returning to average (or worse). It’s because you can’t get manure for cold frames like you really need.

    CJ Hopkins, being depressed, talks about the infinite atomization of “reality” that is, people’s belief systems. That’s the opposite of culture, which has coherent beliefs about things, but to me just the hallmark of infinite work and effort and expense to create “Three World Wars” where this one is all against all, and then they roll out their pre-planned “Man” and saviour who can fix everything. So easy! We were making all the problems, and the day we roll him out all the problems stop! Wot a coincidence! Now we can all agree on and get together behind the Angel of Light.

    But it’s reality a la carte. I don’t know what I would do now as creating a solid belief system took much of my life and nearly killed me as everything said, read, available, were all lies. That was back in the good times, what would we do now? But that doesn’t make one’s religion not the Rock, or that such a Rock isn’t equally available now. It’s just chilling to think what kids have to go through now with less help than ever. Nor can I help them. I’m not as interesting as Tiktok.

    “If there’s a war criminal in the world of imperial posture, it’s the US”

    It’s very lucky that we the People are against our own government widely. Not only will we take it back, but the rest of the world can understand we’re a captured operation and feel more safe about America when the present occupation is shoved out.

    “”they do not control the narrative”

    Who are these two irrelevant dum-dums? My IQ is dropping.

    “Warmonger midget Sunaka.”

    They need a Macron-sized portrait of him on the wall.

    “British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak”

    Who?

    “has shot down calls for a ceasefire in Ukraine”

    Well I’m glad to know that Ukraine is a province of Britain…or something. What the Actual? What makes munchkins like him get on a stool and pipe up? So Ukraine is in control (they say) but “British and Americans reject calls for peace and negotiations.” …Concerning the war we’re not in, but totally in. Which Ukraine controls, be we control. Because they’re independent, but we’re funding every paper clip from border to border, including free health care, pensions, and salaries.

    “However, American military officials have publicly stated that retaking Crimea is beyond Ukraine’s capability,”

    Taking a town of 70,000 is beyond their capability. War commentators pointed out that Ukraine says they have counter-offensives, it’s not that bad. Number of towns above 50 men re-captured by Ukraine: Zero. But Reality is whatever is in my mind right now. Before I have another thought flip across and it all changes again.

    “The Germans are not ready to declare war on Russia.
    • Ukraine Won’t Join NATO Anytime Soon – Scholz (RT)

    They already did. They already double-crossed themselves. They already proved they are not negotiable. Therefore Russia must ignore them, and every thing they ever say again, forever. Why report it? Who cares? Russia doesn’t. And if Russia doesn’t, it has no effect on the war, or reality anymore.

    This is like the headline yesterday, “We’re going to arrange a peace deal without Russia.” Uh…whut?

    “• No One Knows Who Blew Up Nord Stream – German Intel Chief (TASS)
    No intelligence agency is currently able to clearly name those responsible

    Great! I believe you. …You’re all fired. We totally defund you, and save a BIG chunk o’ money. Oh wait, you DO know? You’re just not “Currently able to NAME those responsible” although you KNOW who that is perfectly? Okay, I believe you. …You’re all fired for being cowards and complete, treasonous dereliction of duty. It’s your one and only JOB to gather AND TRANSMIT this information to government. If you don’t, you have no use or purpose.

    Have fun learning to code.

    Yes, P.S., that’s why they phrased it this way, in Diplo-speak, because they’re lying by misdirection. To the public. Who is this double-talk meant to send a secret code to? (We know who did it, now keep us quiet…with mo’ money.)

    Grayvoron District”

    They got one mile into Russia? Be still my heart. The seen and the unseen. How in the HECK is Russia not covered in terror attacks right now? So they win every gold medal for national security I can imagine. Is that what happens when you have National Borders? I wouldn’t know, we’ve never had any in my lifetime.

    Just think: How hard is it to get into a nation of 12 time zones and cut a few wires or bomb a church? I think shopping on Black Friday would be harder. And no attacks after a year? Like 3?

    “• US ‘Highly Likely’ To Default – Yellen (RT)

    Yellen has never been right about anything in her whole tenure. “There’s no inflation” “subprime is contained” “The banks have never been stronger”. However, I feel like they’re up to something. (Congress)

    “discard the separation of powers and unilaterally borrow and spend federal money.”

    Yes, one side wants complete dictatorial power enshrined in the Executive branch, with no appeal or oversight. And the other side…wants the same thing. Always. That’s why it always becomes The Government vs The People.

    “senators are suggesting that a president does not need congressional approval to borrow and spend trillions of dollars,”

    That would be a pleasantly impeachable offense. One the American Public could understand and discuss.

    “Does the WHO really think it can push this through?”

    The NeoCons, who are more or less identical with “the Mafia”, have no choice. They pulled the trigger on this plan, and have to win or lose by it or they will all be rounded up and hung while the people cheer.

    Speaking of: Bill Gates essentially proven to be blackmailed by Epstein. I highly doubt it was merely over a Russian Bridge Player, although his wife left him. Here’s the thing: there’s a TV interview defusing all this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRSK05f2EXI where they ask, “Have you learned anything? Is there a lesson here?” Bill smiles and says:

    “Well, he’s dead.”

    Now do that in a Soprano’s accent.

    “I guess the lesson here is…people who mess with me should be more careful.” Badda-bing. he says it on national TV. Nobody thinks a thing, everyone defends him. No wonder they have contempt for people for being stupid, useless sheep and cattle.

    Would $100 Billion dollars…which he has no other earthly use for…to hide what he’s been doing, and he IS doing, right now, being blackmailed to support vaccines that ALSO kill 100 million people…is that enough money to buy off a few guards? $6 Billion. $1 BILLLLLLLLLLLLION dollars each for each guard, each warden, each Medical Examiner, knowing full well he can have you Whack’d for 1/10th of that. …Ask McAfee. Is that enough to get into MCC and still have $94 Billion dollars left over for fun?

    Okay, if Epstein was DEFINITELY blackmailing Gates, and DEFINITELY owning and directing the Gates fortune to any end they want it to, WHO was Epstein and what are his goals?

    Don’t make me laugh. Epstein is a MATH TEACHER. He has no money and never did. He has no skills or connections. Ghislane is straight-up Mossad from birth. THAT is who now owns and directs Gate’s fortune into pharmaceuticals that kill 100 million people.

    Some commenter says, “I don’t remember voting Bill Gates into a position of power.” No, the power comes from Mossad, a wing of the Davos Derp State, the Mafia.

    Hate to bring it up though: It’s BORING. BOOOOOORRR—RING.

    NAACP Advises Against Travel To Florida, Saying State ‘Openly Hostile’ To Blacks”

    Chicago and Baltimore, who run open rendition sites on Black people for decades: perfectly okay! Never better! Maybe they don’t want Blacks to find out there are states were they are safe.

    “Former US Marine Charged In Death Of Homeless Man Breaks Silence
    “I’m not a white supremacist…”

    First of all, never defend, never apologize.

    Second, despite non-stop lies “We make s—t up!” you can’t BE a White supremacist in the Military. It’s half colored. It’s the most integrated organization around, and they have no tolerance for it. If you’re from the military, I’m betting you’re the #Opposite. Only if you’re a Mayor from Baltimore, Chicago, SF, LA, and NY are you a supremacist. Institutional racism! By the Blue institutions against everyone equally…except for the exceptions, which is every group with a checkmark. And that leaves only one group. Or two: they hate Asians too. Any race who is successful MUST be stopped! They are RUINING our Narrative! Damn you Yeezy and Owens!!! We hates successful Black people like Sowell, Nixon, and Thomas forever and ever!

    “NY Mayor Declares Texas to be an Sanctuary State.” –BBee Sends all his immigrants there. Along with Martha’s Vineyard, who so far has won the world’s speed record in discarding good people into the garbage heap for “somebody else” to help.

    “To [decapitation] strike from Romanian airspace in the south and the Baltic states in the north, in camouflage of the NATO exercise called “Air Defender 23”, and under cover of US F-16 fighter aircraft purportedly operated by Ukrainian pilots but fuelled, directed, and guarded by more than two hundred US and NATO aircraft, including the most advanced US air war fighter, the F-35.”

    That makes sense and is very disturbing. I have never gotten the hang of thinking like a spineless weasel. However, this “needs to happen”, some THING “needs to happen” as an Event to end this nonsense. Since their superpower is violent psychosis, ignoring all reality, some event is needed to puncture it. Then some realization causes capital flow shifts, and crisis in America, their present barricaded control room on the capture ship.

    #135633
    oxymoron
    Participant
    #135634
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #135636
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Not sure if I’d go with Deutsche Bank on anything, they bare such Losers, but what he says about the direction of the economy is basically true.

    Also, if things are as phucked as the M2 money supply suggests, we are barreling toward Depression not recession.

    There seems to be a universal phobia against using the word Depression.

    With 25% of the Empire of Lies on anti-anxiety, anti-depression Big Pharma meds it fits rather nicely together, an economy reflecting the core Depression of the Sheeple People.

    It will be far worse this time than the 1930’s for many reasons but at least be a little honest for once.

    .

    #135638
    Henry
    Participant
    #135639
    Oroboros
    Participant

    In keeping with the War on Reality soap opera series we call ‘life’.

    Nobel Laureate: “Climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience”

    Nobel Laureate: “Climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience” 


    “Dr. John F. Clauser, joint recipient of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, has criticized the climate emergency narrative calling it “a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.”

    So John here got the big prize in a ‘hard science’, not like in economics which is basically Astrology

    More from John:

    “Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists.”

    Is this a .“tell” as they say in poker?

    #135640
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Party on!

    .

    #135641
    zerosum
    Participant

    Pick/send your headline to A.I. to write about
    ———-
    Different and Together
    ————-
    Zelensky …. hiding? …. from? …. Blackmail? …. Bitcoin?
    ——–

    Roll Me Over In the Clover and do it again

    …. bonds maturing in June …
    ———–
    Peace …… My way or the highway ….. Political Interference ….. War ….
    ———-
    Depopulation tool – Climate Exstream
    ——–

    #135642
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    (O deus d’)A Eterna Insatisfação acordou, para realizar que não voltaria a’dormecer.
    “Que fazer?”
    Luz e Dor, Sombra e Prazer.

    (The God of) The Everlasting Dissatisfaction woke up to realize falling asleep was forever out of reach.
    “What to do?”
    Pleasure & Shadow, Light and Pain.
    (Accepting with a certain bonhomie was the gift bestowed upon me; God bless you and yours,)

    #135643
    The Markster
    Participant

    Started the Obama video up top, but had to stop after about ten seconds. Slick lies delivered calmly and with self-assurance by a butcher, a gangster, a war criminal who sees himself as a savior. The man literally makes me want to vomit.

    #135644
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    This technology seems to provide a mechanism to inject mRNA into people from eating biologically contaminated food


    So many Americans want to put mRNA out of their minds after the COVID-19 vaccine debacle. Dreams of injections gone bad with side effects including heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and nerve damage have so many people around the world fearful of the next technological step. On cue with a bad dream Tao and coworkers from Harvard published on a “mechanical pill” to directly inject the stomach lining. If this was a sci-fi movie, people would be heading for the exits!

    https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/robotic-pills-for-gastrointestinal

    #135645

    The material world seemed all ashes and dirt
    So they made up a fake one, instead.
    It’s skittles, it’s nuts, but it sure doesn’t hurt
    Like the demons that dance in their heads.

    #135646
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    body language/footwork

    at: 30 Check out the leg/feet position.

    Young man ascendant; old man descendant.

    Angry Young Man

    Obama’s attempt at damage control remind me of a phenomenon that perhaps even has a specific name. The phenom is: the person too stupid to know when they’re getting their ass kicked. As displayed well in the USA first; China last meme posted above.

    #135647
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    The material world seemed all ashes and dirt
    So they made up a fake one, instead.
    It’s skittles, it’s nuts, but it sure doesn’t hurt
    Like the demons that dance in their heads.

    standing silent ovation

    #135648
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @MyParentsSaidKnow

    If you’re not careful you’re going to wind up being an actual poet who gets printed up in books and anthologies and everything.

    #135649
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Veils have been used in various capacities throughout human history in various cultures, usually in connection with religion or ritual, often in rituals involving transition

    This transition can often involve some sort of privation: fasting, abstinence from specified things, seclusion.

    The most obvious remaining ritual in the West is the wedding veil. The bride should abstain from being seen by the husband at certain times, diets leading up to the ceremony, the veil is lifted upon the transformational transition to a new life.

    What did we do during the pandemic? Secluded ourselves, denied ourselves various “non essential” things, tried to purify and stay away from that which was unclean, wore masks/veils. Used sanitizing gel in much the way one wets one’s hands upon entering a church (where required upon entrance, I made sure to very obviously cross myself in front of the sanitizer dispenser)

    Once we did a particular sanctifying, purifying thing, then the masks could come off, was the general idea. A worldwide induction ritual.

    #135650
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #135651
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    #135652
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #135653
    jb-hb
    Participant

    It was interesting awhile back, there was a Tim Pool video about ideological shifts in Republicans and Democrats, citing a survey in which respondents were asked about specific ideological beliefs.

    There were a few snapshots of different time frames.

    The red Republican hump moved a bit towards the center over the course of time, with a slight hump to the right popping up in the latest surveys.

    The Democrat hump moved WAY to the left with a very, VERY sizeable huge hump over on the far left side OF the main hump.

    So the takeaway was that for specific, objectively observable tenets, the Republicans hadn’t moved much except to become more moderate overall, but with a very slight increase over on the right as well.

    Meanwhile the Dems had gone way, way over to the left. Far less intersection of the red and blue humps than ever before. This gives some tangible visual representation of the complaint that anyone right of Mao is getting screeched at for being “far right”

    Interestingly, search results in various search engines no longer want to show me that one. They want to show me a NEW chart in which the red and blue humps both move away from the center, with the red republican hump getting decidedly lumped into the far right side of their hump.

    I drilled down on this survey. They didn’t question on where people stood on various ideological points.

    Instead, they asked how much people agreed with each other. The result was that Republicans show as going far-right on the graph due to disagreement with Democrat tenets. They are far right radical as defined in Democrat terms. While having ACTUALLY moderated over the years.

    #135654
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @Dr D re: the lantern

    Here in Sinkist-Ville (SoCal) they used ‘smudge pots’ – a short length of pipe, usually concrete or clay, installed end-up in the middle of an orchard. If frost is forecast, the smudge pot gets a fire, and the smoke blankets the orchard. Slight rise in temp, but also more moisture precipitates onto the ground, rather than blanketing the oranges and freezing.

    It’s been outlawed for a while, 30 years?

    #135655
    Michael Reid
    Participant


    They were very excited about it, because for the first time in history, they found a wild bat coronavirus that would bind with a human ACE2 receptor—a protein (enzyme) on the surface of many cell types.

    With this important discovery, Baric commenced work with his Chinese colleagues to fashion these two viruses into two new chimeric viruses that would infect the human respiratory tract. They reported their results in papers published in 2015 and 2016.

    https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/the-great-sars-cov-2-charade-chapter-e1e

    #135656
    TAE Summary
    Participant

    @bosco
    “As displayed well in the USA first; China last meme posted above.”

    So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen
    – Jesus

    #135658
    jb-hb
    Participant

    another survey I just recalled – republicans and democrats were asked questions to see if they could accurately sum up the other side’s beliefs

    Republicans, despite not agreeing, were fairly accurate about Democrats

    Democrats were off in lala land, just deranged from reality, in what they insisted the Republicans believed.

    I’m no republican. I like stuff like Bob Black’s Abolition of Work. And republicans are far from perfect. But at least the republicans stayed normal useless assholes.

    #135659
    Mr. House
    Participant
    #135661
    John Day
    Participant

    “Fox Needs To Get The Full Bud Light Treatment” (Let’s Go, Brandon!)
    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-05-22/fox-news-falls-deeper-bud-light-territory

    #135662
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Democrats were off in lala land, just deranged from reality, in what they insisted the Republicans believed.”

    Sadly, this is the base of “We make s–t up!” and I deal with it a lot. How are you supposed to deal with people who just … make stuff up … about you? Just make it up? Have no idea, don’t ask? Worse, think they already know and can’t be told?

    And the stuff they make up is eye-watering and jaw-dropping. You can say “No, actually…” don’t care! Don’t care what you say, I. MADE. STUFF. UP. And it’s going to stay that way. Until anyone but YOU, who knows, says otherwise. Until only my In-Group all agrees otherwise, immaculately, miraculously. Which they will somehow do without asking, listening, or knowing.

    This is deeply aggravated by ANYTHING you say or are. Like, you…drive a pickup truck. For work. Without asking, you’re a far-right White Supremacist, gun-toting, gay killing MAGA person. Because maybe other Democrats want to have heavy equipment dig in-ground pools at their house and the pickup delivers them? Jump to conclusions about ANY. THING. You like steaks. Boom, you’re a far-right White Supremacist, gun-toting, gay killing MAGA person. You understand the engineering challenges of solar, having installed them, and begin to bring it up. You’re a far-right White Supremacist, gun-toting, gay killing MAGA person.

    What do you do? Nod and smile. That’s being polite, which we are. No one learns anything, so oh well. Nod an smile. They’re good people. The only problem is that they’re going to kill everyone alive.

    #135663
    John Day
    Participant

    Hunter Biden IRS Whistleblower Alleges Retaliation After He Made Protected Disclosures
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hunter-biden-irs-whistleblower-alleges-retaliation-after-he-made-protected-disclosures

    #135664
    John Day
    Participant

    The Great Degrowth https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/the-great-degrowth

    Thanks Christine. Yes, the Gamma Radiation can be from DU, because the breakdown products of uranium fission break down further, emitting gamma rays.
    ​ ​Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev warned on Friday that a radioactive cloud was heading towards Western Europe following the destruction of a Ukrainian warehouse storing British-supplied depleted uranium ammunition.
    ​ ​Sputnik News spoke with Dr. Chris Busby, physical chemist and scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, about how the West’s decision to provide depleted uranium (DU) ammunition to Ukraine has potentially caused a continent-wide ecological disaster. Below is his answer in full.
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20230519/ukraines-depleted-uranium-blast-europe-on-brink-of-environmental-disaster-1110462939.html

    ​Fade To Black In Ukraine: Jim Kunstler​
    ​ ​After two-plus years of “Joe Biden” — well, our country is bypassing the banana republic stage of dissolution and depravity and steaming quickly into a Hieronymus Bosch dystopia of financial, social, psychological and moral ruin. Every official utterance is a lie. Everything’s broken or breaking. And seemingly, on-purpose. The nagging question, of course, is on whose purposes?
    And why is Mr. Zelensky flitting from one country to another the past month? Because the game of Let’s You and Him Fight is drawing to a close and Mr. Z may find himself fatally unpopular back on the home-front. He has managed to send upward of a hundred-thousand young Ukrainian men to their deaths in the meat-grinder, and perhaps a million more have hightailed it for other countries.

    Fade to Black in Ukraine

    ​ C.J. Hopkins , The War On Reality (Revisited)
    ​ The War on Reality is a civil war, but it is much more than just a civil war. It is an asymmetrical, polymorphous, metastatic, multiplicitous war. An ontological free-for-all. It has no conventions or rules of engagement. There are no battle lines. The battle is everywhere. Alliances shift from day to day. It is chaos, unrelenting, inescapable chaos. An omnipresent, immaterial, omnipotent organism attacking itself. It is continual, and completely unwinnable. It is unwinnable because it has already been won. It ended in victory the moment it began, and now we’re doomed to go on fighting it forever, or until some less ethereal leviathan is born, or reborn, out of its ashes…
    ​..​Historically, we humans have not done very well in such psychotic ontological environments. When “reality” is shattered into a thousand little shards, and things fall apart, and the center does not hold, we tend to get rather scared, and confused, and agitated. We start to panic. We try to put “reality” back together again. This does not work. This worsens our panic. We start looking around for a new “reality.” We start looking for a savior, a leader, a Führer, someone with a vision, and the will, and the power, to impose a new “reality” on the ontological chaos that is making us so confused and agitated, and scared, and angry, and restore some sense of ideological cohesion so that we don’t have to think about “reality” on a moment-by-moment basis anymore.
    ​ ​This is the time of dime-store messiahs, tinpot tyrants, zealots, gurus, hustlers, hosers, scam artists, quacks, snake oil salesmen of every variety, fanatical revolutionary movements, new religions and political parties, and so on. Typically, eventually, once the hapless masses have been repeatedly duped, and bilked, and betrayed, and gaslighted and humiliated to the point where they can’t even think anymore, literally cannot think because their brains are broken, and they just want someone to make it all stop … well, to rephrase an old Buddhist platitude, “when the masses are ready, the despot will appear.”​ …
    ​..Capitalism, though it can adapt to anything, has never been inherently inclined toward fascism or any other form of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is a value-coding machine. Its objective is to completely code society with its values, its official ideology (i.e., “reality”). Every aspect of society, not just politics, culture, and so on, but the most intimate aspects of people’s lives.
    ​ ​Capitalism is a value-decoding machine. Its objective is to completely decode society of any values that impede the free flows of capital, rendering everything and everyone a de facto commodity, transforming societies into markets. It can adapt to totalitarianism and other varieties of despotism when necessary, but left to its own devices, or … you know, granted dominion over the entire Earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon it, it sets about decoding and destabilizing values, destabilizing value and meaning itself, until, ultimately, everything means anything, or nothing, or whatever the market determines it means or is worth at any given moment.
    ​ ​The point is, the ongoing War on Reality is not a means to an end. It is the end. The official ideology (i.e., “reality”) that GloboCap, Inc. is implementing is not a set of official values or beliefs. It is the absence of any values or beliefs, any non-commodifiable values and beliefs. Values and beliefs are fine, as long as they’re just empty signs, logos, meaningless identity statements, and not principles and beliefs you are trying to live by, and that you are crazy enough to fight to preserve.​..
    ​..And, if that doesn’t sound like your kind of future, or reality, the “everything is a floating signifier” reality … no worries, you can always drop out of the “mainstream” and join the carnival of “conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, Russiagate deniers, climate change deniers, disinformationists, malinformationists, transphobes, white supremacists, violent domestic extremists,” and assorted other freaks and curiosities of nature that are actively being quarantined, or are quarantining themselves, in ideological ghettos where normal consumers never have to see them and they (i.e., we, the deviants and freaks) are preyed upon by legions of charlatans, demagogues, agents provocateurs, and other such spiritual and emotional parasites, until the day comes when we find ourselves spastically tweeting about an 86-year-old Chomsky chasing naked sex slaves around Epstein’s island, ripped to the gills on Viagra and Ecstasy, and probably freshly harvested adrenochrome!
    ​ ​That, or you could withdraw from society completely, and go live in a Kaczynski cabin in Montana, or Idaho, or wherever folks are doing that these days, as several of my readers advised me recently, and forage for berries, and barbecue squirrels, and, well, you know, defecate in a hole in the ground.
    https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-war-on-reality-revisited

    #135667
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ I’m experiencing technical difficulties uploading…

    They must wait 72 hours for further debate after agreeing on a debt-ceiling increase. The Treasury is required to pay, but won’t talk about selling assets, such as gold/silver. The funds appear to run out about June 15. Which side has more to lose or gain while the federal government sits in default? Who are the “sides”?
    ​ ​GOP, White House Remain ‘Far Apart’ On Debt Deal, Treasury Asks Agencies About Delayed Payments
    ​ ​According to Punchbowl News, McCarthy says he told Biden that there would be no agreement to a ‘clean’ debt limit deal which wouldn’t include spending cuts, and that he won’t agree to raise taxes. The government needs to ‘spend less money,’ he said, telling Republican lawmakers that ‘we are nowhere near a debt ceiling deal yet.’
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gop-white-house-remain-far-apart-debt-deal-treasury-asks-agencies-about-delayed-payments

    [If inflation from supply-contraction, on top of a huge asset-bubble, can’t be beaten, then government paying high interest rates assures eventual default on the Federal debt. Nobody really expects default now, but wouldn’t it make more sense strategically?​ How about making gold run up to $10k/oz, then switching to a gold-standard?​]
    ​ The Fed Is Losing The Inflation Fight​, Peter Schiff
    ​ ​Household debt is now above $17 trillion for the first time ever. Even more concerning is the fact that credit card debt was flat in Q1. Credit card balances typically fall in the first quarter.
    ​ ​Americans are using their credit cards as a lifeline. That’s how they’re dealing with higher prices. They’re charging stuff.”
    ​ ​In March alone, revolving credit, which included credit card debt, was up 17.3% on an annual basis. Meanwhile, interest rates on credit card debt have spiked to over 20%. Peter said this indicates that the Fed really isn’t making any progress on inflation.
    ​ ​The consumer keeps spending. Where are they getting the money? They’re borrowing it. Credit continues to expand. That’s part of the inflationary dynamic. ​ ​ Inflation is an expansion of the money supply, which includes credit. So, consumers are not cutting back on their spending because of higher prices. They’re not even cutting back on their spending because of higher interest rates. They just keep on spending. So, prices are going to keep on rising, and this next quarter-point rate hike isn’t going to be any more effective than the previous rate hikes, which means they’re going to have to do it again.”
    ​ ​But Peter said no matter how much they hike, it’s not going to matter. That’s what the markets fail to understand. Everybody is thinking that since the central bank is going to fight even harder to fight inflation, it’s a good sign and the Fed is on course to slay the inflation dragon.
    ​ ​No. The Fed is losing its fight with inflation. That’s why it’s going to try harder. But it’s going to be ineffective. If they couldn’t beat inflation with 5%, they’re not going to beat it with 5.25%.”
    ​ ​It’s not just household debt that’s a problem. The federal government has a debt problem of its own. Federal revenues have collapsed even as the Biden administration keeps right on spending. And why are tax receipts going down? Because the economy is weakening.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/peter-schiff-fed-losing-inflation-fight

    #135670
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Destroyed, Michael Snyder​
    ​ ​If you wanted to destroy the middle class, one way that you could accomplish that goal would be to flood the system with money. Of course that is precisely what we have witnessed over the past few years. Our leaders have pumped trillions of new dollars into ​(the top of)​ the system, and the wealthy have gotten much, much wealthier. But meanwhile, the rest of us have seen the cost of living rise much faster than our paychecks have. As a result, we are getting poorer and the middle class is shrinking.
    ​ ​Over time, our capitalist economy has steadily evolved into a system where almost all of the wealth and almost all of the power are concentrated in the hands of giant institutions.
    ​ ​Collectively, big government and big corporations run virtually everything, and this system of “corporate socialism” funnels tremendous amount of wealth into the pockets of a very small minority of the population.
    ​ ​If you are in that club, life is good.
    ​ ​But if you are not in that club, life can be a struggle.
    ​ ​The gap between the rich and the poor has steadily grown, and now it is larger than it has ever been before.
    http://themostimportantnews. com/archives/the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-destroyed

    ​ Charles Hugh Smith​ , 2023: Echoes of 1973
    2023 is echoing 1973 in potentially consequential ways.. It’s not just one year, of course; the entire era from 2019 echoes the era that started in 1969, when the second-order effects of postwar policies finally started kicking in.
    Consider these similarities / echoes:
    1. Major shifts in global capital and trade flows that attracted little notice start to matter in terms of currency valuations, inflation, monetary and fiscal policy and geopolitics: check.
    2. After decades of modest inflation, inflation not only rises but is sticky rather than transitory: check.
    3. Major shifts in the power structure of global oil markets: check.
    4. Cultural and social shifts become divisive, reaching destructive extremes: check.
    5. A global superpower is ensnared in a hot war in which the other side is supplied by a superpower rival: check.
    6. Political scandals upend the cozy arrangements of political elites: check.
    7. A new wave of geopolitical rivalries arise between allies and rivals alike: check.
    8. Stock and bond markets keep rallying like nothing’s changed, but since things have changed, each rally fails: check.
    ​ ​Let’s focus on #8: market participants continue assuming that the past 15 years are an accurate guide to the next 15 years, unable or unwilling to face the enormity of the changes that have already occurred in the fundamental structures of state and private-sector finance and the economy. (I discuss these in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal.)
    ​ ​These shifts guarantee the next 15 years will not follow the low-risk scripts of the past 15 years. I’ve explained here many times that systems have their own dynamics, and so they don’t respond to our desires or opinions or our policy tweaks. No matter how many policy tweaks you throw at diminishing returns, for example, returns still diminish–though you can mask this reality temporarily behind extremes of stimulus and other financial sleight of hand.
    ​ ​Tightly bound systems, i.e. highly centralized systems, unravel far more abruptly than loosely bound systems, no matter how many fiscal or monetary policy tweaks you throw at the system.
    http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2023/05/2023-echoes-of-1973.html

    #135671
    John Day
    Participant

    It wouldn’t take the Michael Snyder most-important-news link above until I deactivated it with a space between dot and com.
    Weird…

    #135672
    John Day
    Participant

    John Campbell explains “International Health Regulations” under WHO treaty in 15 minutes, and well, crossing out the old words and showing the new words. Thanks to Meryl Nass MD for posting this.

    ​ ​Many Pregnant Women Were Forced to Get COVID Shots. Here’s What Happened to Them.​ Joseph Mercola DO​
    ​ ​COVID-19 shot contents are biodistributed into the bloodstream within hours and cross “all physiologic barriers including the maternal-placental-fetal barrier and the blood brain barriers in both the mother and the fetus,” according to maternal-fetal medicine expert Dr. James Thorp.
    ​ ​Compared to the flu vaccine, COVID-19 shots are associated with a significant increase in adverse events among women of reproductive age.
    ​ ​Data revealed a 27-fold higher risk of miscarriage and a more than two-fold increased risk of adverse fetal outcomes across six different categories following COVID-19 shots.
    ​ ​Birth rates in multiple European countries fell significantly at the end of 2021, months after COVID-19 shots became widely utilized.
    Researchers have called for the immediate suspension of COVID-19 vaccination for all persons of childbearing and reproductive age.

    Many Pregnant Women Were Forced to Get COVID Shots. Here’s What Happened to Them.

    Key Differences of Innate & Adaptive Immunity for Handling Pandemics​ , Dr Marian Laderoute​
    [Take vitamin-D. Don’t take vaccines. Exercise outdoors. Sleep. Eat fresh vegetables. Enjoy “a good immune system”.]
    https://hervk102.substack.com/p/key-differences-of-innate-and-adaptive

    Steve Kirsch has a vaccine questionnaire for those of us who are parents. I entered data on our four young adult “children”.
    The most important survey I’ve ever done
    Are you a parent of a child 40 and younger? Please take my survey now. It’s REALLY important. I’ll explain why soon. Just take my word for it right now.
    https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/the-most-important-survey-ive-ever

    ​ ​How solar farms took over the California desert: ‘An oasis has become a dead sea’​ [Fossil-fuels are exquisite​;​ ​marvelous. Cherish and spare them.]
    ​ ​Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is ‘solving one problem by creating others’
    ​ ​“There are so many other places we should be putting solar,” says Clarke, of the National Parks Conservation Association, from homes to warehouses to parking lots and industrial zones. He describes the current model of large-scale, centralised power generation, hundreds of miles from where the power is actually needed, as “a 20th-century business plan for a 21st-century problem”.
    ​ ​“The conversion of intact wildlife habitat should be the absolute last resort, but it’s become our first resort – just because it’s the easy fix.”
    ​ ​Vincent Battaglia, founder of Renova Energy, a rooftop solar company based in Palm Desert, agrees. “We’ve been led to believe that all solar is good solar,” he says. “But it’s not when it molests pristine land, requires hundreds of millions of dollars to transmit to city centres, and loses so much power along the way. It is simply preserving the monopoly of the big energy companies.”​ [Thanks Christine]
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/21/solar-farms-energy-power-california-mojave-desert

    #135673
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @John Day re: Thanks Christine. Yes, the Gamma Radiation can be from DU, because the breakdown products of uranium fission break down further, emitting gamma rays.

    Also, though I may be off my rocker, not a physicist, etc etc… You’ve got five metric shite-tonnes of DU stored in close proximity, getting warmer and warmer. Along comes HE warhead and does what the ignition charge inside a real nuclear warhead does, that is, compresses the fissionable material quickly with great force. Did the missile strike cause a/some criticality?

    #135674
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Free blog post by Art Berman:

    “What part of a bear market don’t oil analysts understand?”

    BEAR MARKET MATH

    Bear Market Math

    F.S.

    #135675
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    Depleted Uranium – I found this snippet :

    “One 2012 study found that more than half of the babies born in the Iraqi city of Fallujah between 2007 and 2010 had birth defects. Among the pregnant woman surveyed in the study, more than 45 percent experienced miscarriages in the two-year period following the 2004 U.S. assaults on Fallujah. Geiger counter readings of depleted uranium-contaminated sites in densely populated Iraqi urban areas have consistently shown radiation levels that are 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal.”

    But the UK has said [in effect] that dropping powdered DU from an aircraft over London would not be an issue!

    #135676
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Filed under We make s—t up! (And get rich of course):

    “The CRISPR editing application targets a specific gene that is conserved in all mammals, so this would definitely be relevant to all types of pigs,” he said.

    “We are working as well on cattle, goats, and sheep, all of which are important food-producing animals,” he said. “But the research on pigs has advanced faster compared to other livestock we work with because they bear litters and the generation interval is comparatively faster.”

    As for food safety, Oatley said there is no concern about food safety from the CRISPR edits that were made.

    New World ag on its way: FDA gives initial thumbs up to pork from gene-edited pigs

    As I have documented over my time here, the No Shame! Anything Goes! progrom against any & all constraints of morals, ethics & spiritual sanity (*now* fait accompli), where the gate keepers wield whatever contrivances are necessary to turn *essential* truths into lies, innocence into guilt, physical laws of the universe into endlessly debated nonsence, We The People into The Enemy via capricious adjudication of .GOV + economic *power*.

    And as the manifestation of Collective EG0ic Madness roils on, even those that should *know* better reamin trapped within brain-based onanisms, with most at best posting ephemeral declarations on the no-thing of the Internet (looking at you CJ), having little -to- no effect in the Reality of direct human interaction, denying We The People’s underlying connection to the implicit consciousness that unites us all, perfunctorily hemmed in by their indoctrinated militant atheism instilled during childhood disenchantment…

    Too bad, so sad, humanity utterly lacks the connectiveness to identify & rebel against TPTB/TBTF who, after designating 90% of We The People as undesirables (when peaceful coexistence, with plenty of resources to spare), are unfurling their Final Solution in broad daylight 😐

    But don’t mind me, go ahead with the self-important of transitory opinions & other such navel gazing, as Those Who Shall Not Be Named increase the mind fuckery & genocide of life of planet earth…

    Vale et deus velocitate.

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