Jun 202023
 
 June 20, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Vincent van Gogh Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer 1888

 

We Need a Peace President (Ron Paul)
Blinken Says US Does Not Support Taiwan Independence (JTN)
Beijing Tells US To Respect ‘One China’ Policy (RT)
Future Of Humanity Depends On China-US Relations – Xi (RT)
Scholz: West Should ‘Brace’ Itself For Prolonged Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)
Biden Warns Of ‘Real’ Nuclear Threat (RT)
Greater Eurasian Partnership Becomes Russia’s Flagship Project – Lavrov (TASS)
BRICS Expansion, De-Dollarization and ‘Decline of US Empire’ (Tweedie)
Kiev Reportedly Can’t Account for ‘Hundreds of Millions’ in Weapons (Reed)
EU Wants to Mandate Arms Makers to Prioritize Orders for Ukraine
German Armor Too Wide To Transport – Bild (RT)
BlackRock, JP Morgan Set Up ‘Reconstruction Bank’ For Ukraine (HE)
Strange Days (James Howard Kunstler)
The New World War On Free Speech (Shellenberger)
Juneteenth, The Day Republicans Freed All The Democrats’ Slaves (BBee)

 

 

Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1670604730794401793

 

 

 

 

Putin OUN

 

 

Lavrov Germany
https://twitter.com/i/status/1670747070372691969

 

 

Results of the counteroffensive …

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..we desperately need a peace president to do for us what JFK did for the US during the Cuba crisis..”

We Need a Peace President (Ron Paul)

Most people agree that we are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Some would even argue that we are closer now than we were in those fateful days, when Soviet missiles in Cuba almost triggered a nuclear war between the US and the USSR. In those days we were told that we were in a life-or-death struggle with Communism and thus could not cede a square foot of territory or the dominoes would fall one-by-one until the “Reds” ruled over us. That crisis was very real to me, as I was drafted into the military in the middle of the US/USSR standoff over Cuba and we could all feel how close we were to annihilation. Fortunately, we had a president in the White House at the time who understood the dangers of nuclear brinkmanship.

Even though he was surrounded by hawks who could never forgive him for aborting the idiotic Bay of Pigs Cuba invasion, President John F. Kennedy picked up the telephone for a discussion with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, which eventually saved the world. Historians now tell us that President Kennedy agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing missiles from Cuba. It was a classic case of how diplomacy can work if properly employed. It is all too clear that we do not have a John F. Kennedy in the White House today. Although we no longer face a Soviet empire and communist ideology as justification for taking a confrontational tone toward Russia, the Biden Administration is still dragging the US toward a nuclear conflict. Why are they putting us all at risk?

The same old “domino theory” that was discredited in the Cold War: If we don’t fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian, Putin will soon be marching through Berlin. This all started with Biden promising to only send uniforms and medical supplies to Ukraine for fear of sparking a Russian retaliation. From there we went to anti-tank missiles, multiple-rocket launchers, Patriot missiles, Bradley fighting vehicles, and millions of rounds of ammunition. The Biden Administration announced last week that it would send depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine, which poisons the earth for millennia to come. Rumors are that long-range ATACMs missiles are to be delivered soon, which could strike deep into Russia. Apparently, F-16 fighter jets are also on the way.

The escalation rationale from Washington, we are told, is that since the Russians have not directly retaliated against NATO for NATO’s direct support of Ukraine’s war machine, we can be sure they never will respond. Is that really a wise bet? It is clear to many that US-built F-16 fighters taking off from NATO bases with NATO pilots attacking Russians in Ukraine – or even Russia itself – would be a declaration of war on Russia. That means World War III – something we managed to avoid for the whole Cold War. Congress is silent – or compliant – as we lurch forward toward disaster for no discernable US strategic goal. Biden – or whoever is actually running the show – is forging straight ahead. As we move into the US presidential election cycle one thing is clear: we desperately need a peace president to do for us what JFK did for the US during the Cuba crisis. Hopefully it won’t be too late!

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“About 50% of the global commercial container traffic… goes through the Taiwan Strait every day,” Blinken remarked, including the vast majority of “high-end semiconductors.”

Blinken Says US Does Not Support Taiwan Independence (JTN)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a press conference Monday that the U.S. does not support Taiwan independence. “We do not support Taiwan independence,” Blinken said. “We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side. We continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross strait differences. We remain committed to continuing our responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act including making sure Taiwan has the ability to defend itself.” Blinken made clear that the U.S. does have some concerns about China and what its actions could have on the world. “At the same time, we and many others have deep concerns about some of the provocative actions that China has taken in recent years going back to 2016,” he continued, according to Fox News.


“And the reason that this is a concern for so many countries, not just the United States, is that were there to be a crisis over Taiwan, the likelihood is that could produce an economic crisis that could affect quite literally the entire world.” Blinken wrapped up his meeting with China President Xi Jinping and summarized it as “candid” and “constructive,” but admitted to “profound differences” as the two nations seek to repair “unstable” relations with each other. He said during an interview with NPR that it was important to maintain peace with the nation that China treats as its own. Taiwan is a massive contributor to the global trade market. “About 50% of the global commercial container traffic… goes through the Taiwan Strait every day,” Blinken remarked, including the vast majority of “high-end semiconductors.” “If either of those things were taken offline as a result of a crisis, it could have devastating consequences for the global economy,” he continued.

Blinken Taiwan

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Where Blinken got his talking points.

Beijing Tells US To Respect ‘One China’ Policy (RT)

The US should respect the One China principle and stop supporting Taiwan’s push for independence from Beijing, Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi has told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “China has no room to compromise or concede” on the status of Taiwan, Wang told Blinken during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guest House in Beijing on Monday. “The US must truly adhere to the One China principle… respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and clearly oppose ‘Taiwan independence’,” the director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission office of the Chinese Communist Party was quoted by local media as saying. Washington’s support for sovereignty in Taiwan, a self-governed island of 23.5 million which Beijing views as part of its territory, has been among the issues aggravating tensions between China and the US in recent years.

According to Wang, bilateral relations have now reached “a critical juncture.” He told Blinken that Washington needs to make a choice “between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict” with Beijing. “We must take a responsible attitude toward the people, history and the world, and reverse the downward spiral of US-China relations,” he said. China’s top diplomat also called upon the Biden administration to stop making threats towards Beijing and abandon its “suppression” of Chinese scientific and technological development. According to the US State Department, Blinken stressed the importance of “responsibly managing the competition” between the US and China “through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”

He also told Wang that Washington will “continue to use diplomacy to raise areas of concern and stand up for the interests and values of the American people.” Blinken is the first US secretary of state to visit Beijing in five years. His trip was initially scheduled to take place in February, was postponed due to the so-called “spy balloon” incident. Washington claimed it shot down a Chinese surveillance aircraft over its territory, while Beijing said it was merely a weather balloon, which had strayed into American airspace by accident. Following his meeting with Wang, Blinken held talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping. His two-day visit also included negotiations with China’s recently appointed Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Sunday.

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“The international community [..] doesn’t want to choose sides in the event of a conflict..”:

Future Of Humanity Depends On China-US Relations – Xi (RT)

Stable relations between China and the US are vital for the international community, which doesn’t want to choose sides between the two countries, Chinese President Xi Jinping said during a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on Monday. “Planet Earth is big enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the US,” Xi told Blinken, according to a statement by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. The Chinese leader said that the world is interested in “generally stable” ties between Beijing and Washington, because “whether the two countries can find the right way to get along bears on the future and destiny of humanity.” The international community expects China and the US to “coexist in peace and have friendly and cooperative relations,” and doesn’t want to choose sides in the event of a conflict, Xi stated.

The Chinese president argued that competition with Beijing would not help Washington to solve America’s domestic problems or the challenges currently facing the world. “China respects US interests and does not seek to challenge or displace the US,” Xi stressed, adding that Beijing expects the same approach from the Biden administration. Xi called on the US to adopt a rational and pragmatic attitude towards China, and to jointly work on improving ties and making the global situation more stable. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Blinken had assured Xi during their 35-minute talk that the US does not seek conflict or a new Cold War with Beijing, and has no intention of trying to change China’s political system.

Washington expects to continue high-level engagement with Beijing, while keeping lines of communication open and managing differences responsibly, the top US diplomat said, according to the Chinese statement. Blinken is the first US secretary of state to meet Xi since 2018. He was initially scheduled to arrive in Beijing in early February, but the trip was postponed due to the so-called “spy balloon” scandal. The US claimed it had shot down a Chinese surveillance aircraft over its territory, while China insisted that the object was a weather balloon which had strayed into American airspace by accident. The two-day visit by Blinken also included a meeting with Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, earlier on Monday, as well as talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Sunday.

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“However, it’s obvious that NATO will not become a party to the conflict.”

Scholz: West Should ‘Brace’ Itself For Prolonged Conflict In Ukraine (TASS)

The West should adjust its policy with the expectation that the Ukraine conflict may go on for an indefinite period of time German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday. “We have to brace ourselves that the Russian [special military operation] act could last for a long time,” German Chancellor Scholz said speaking at a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg “This is what we are preparing for and this is what we are orienting our policy toward,” Scholz told Stoltenberg. “Germany will continue to be a staunch supporter of Ukraine as long as it takes,” Scholz continued. “However, it’s obvious that NATO will not become a party to the conflict.”

On June 14, the German government has adopted the country’s first ever National Security Strategy, which enshrines the main principles and measures to counter potential external threats to the state in the coming years. “The determining factor” of the document’s development was Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the “Zeitenwende” or “tipping point,” as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it. The German government enshrined its NATO commitments and decided to increase defense spending by twp percent of GDP. “We express our strong commitment to NATO and the EU and strengthen the Bundeswehr (the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Germany) to meet the primary objective of national and alliance defense (of two percent),” the document said.

It pointed out that the authorities planned to reach the two-percent increase in defense spending in the term of “over several years.” “We will strengthen our security in cyberspace and space,” the document stressed. In addition, the German government said that it will reduce dependence on energy and raw materials supplies and work on their diversification. “We will reduce unilateral dependency on the supplies of raw materials and energy resources by diversifying them. We will work together with our businesses to promote raw materials projects, including creating strategic stockpiles,” the document said. The German authorities also added that they sought to expand national food, energy, and medicine reserves. The document included as well plans to overpass a law aimed at protecting critical infrastructure facilities.

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“Before blaming others, Washington could use some introspection.”

Biden Warns Of ‘Real’ Nuclear Threat (RT)

President Joe Biden has claimed there is a “real” threat that Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons, soon after the Kremlin announced that it would station some of its arsenal in a friendly neighboring state. Speaking to a group of donors in California on Monday, Biden suggested that Russia’s moves in Belarus could be a sign that it is preparing to use its smaller-yield tactical nukes, despite recent comments from the White House acknowledging no “imminent indication” of any such attack. “When I was out here about two years ago saying I worried about the Colorado river drying up, everybody looked at me like I was crazy,” he said, adding “They looked at me like when I said I worry about [Russian President Vladimir] Putin using tactical nuclear weapons. It’s real.”

The statement came after the president slammed Russia’s upcoming deployments as “totally irresponsible” over the weekend. He previously told reporters he felt “extremely negative” about the decision. Moscow and Minsk finalized an agreement on hosting tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory last month. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, the atomic warheads will be mounted on Iskander-M missiles and fighter jets specifically modified for the purpose. Russia first revealed that talks for the deployments were underway in March, and said the decision was a response after Britain supplied depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine last year. On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that “everything is going according to plan,” adding that preparations for the missiles would be completed by July.

Responding to critical reactions from US officials, the Russian Embassy in the United States previously accused Washington of hypocrisy on the issue, pointing to some 150 American nuclear missiles stationed across Western Europe and Türkiye. “The United States has been for decades maintaining a large arsenal of its nuclear weapons in Europe. Together with its NATO allies it participates in nuclear-sharing arrangements and trains for scenarios of nuclear weapons use against our country,” it said, adding “Before blaming others, Washington could use some introspection.”

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Building a formidable bloc.

Greater Eurasian Partnership Becomes Russia’s Flagship Project – Lavrov (TASS)

Building support for the Greater Eurasian Partnership project could be seen as the flagship project of Russia’s foreign policy, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. “Our flagship foreign political project is to [build] support for the concept of the Greater Eurasian Partnership. What we’re talking about is facilitating the objective process of forming a broad integrative configuration that is open for all countries and associations across our vast continent. Practical steps are already being made [in this direction],” Lavrov said.


These include the processes of interlinking the complementary development plans of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, expanding interaction within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) with the involvement of SCO observer states and dialogue partners, strengthening the strategic partnership between Russia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and establishing working contacts among the executive bodies of the EAEU, SCO and ASEAN, the foreign minister noted. “Among the concrete deliverables [of these processes] we envision the provision of mutually beneficial, interlinking infrastructure and the creation of a continent-wide architecture of peace, development and cooperation throughout Greater Eurasia,” Lavrov added.

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“I could give you ten other statistics and they all point in the same direction. This is an empire that is declining..”

BRICS Expansion, De-Dollarization and ‘Decline of US Empire’ (Tweedie)

Economist Richard Wolff told Sputnik that the US displaced its mother country Britain as the world’s dominant imperial power around 1920 — and that history was now repeating itself. “The American empire didn’t work the same way. It didn’t set up colonies the way the British had in India or South Africa or any of the other places,” Wolff said. “It had a more informal empire. [From] The way it had managed to control Latin America throughout the early years of this country to how they expanded and controlled the world by economic arrangements, by political deals, by alliances.” But the US empire peaked around the year 2000, the academic said, and is now in “decline.” “We lost the wars in Vietnam. We lost the war in Afghanistan. We lost the war in Iraq,” Wolff said.

“It’s not clear what’s going to happen in Ukraine. But I wouldn’t bet money on a different outcome there either. And that war is a war between the United States and Russia more than anything else, with the disaster being concentrated on […] Ukraine.” While the US leads the G7 group of the biggest Western economies, “there’s a different and other bloc, and that’s what’s new, it’s the bloc called the BRICS.” “The BRICS now account for 33 per cent, one third of the total output of goods and services on this planet, whereas the United States and its allies have slipped to under 30 per cent, about 29 per cent of total output.” “I could give you ten other statistics and they all point in the same direction. This is an empire that is declining,” he added.

The conflict in Ukraine and Western sanctions on Russia — the world’s biggest energy and food grain exporter — has accelerated that downfall. “The economic war between Russia and Europe is being lost by Europe, not by Russia, which was not the intent, but is the outcome,” Wolff said. “The Europeans are going to have to ask themselves, which side are you on? Are you going to stay with the US and the G7 and heading down the slide of your bloc as the BRICS blocs rises, or are you going to choose the other way?” The academic pointed out that when the UK had the world’s greatest empire from the 17th to the 19th centuries, the pound sterling was the “global currency.” With the rise of the US in the 20th century the dollar usurped the pound.

“What that means is that everywhere in the world, people need dollars to do their business. Central banks hold dollars as that alongside of gold, as the guarantor of the value of their currency,” Wolff explained. Now BRICS has overtaken the G7 as “the dominant economic bloc in the world,” a new contest has begun which will end in “the decline of the dollar and the rise of whatever alternative the BRICS settle on, either the Chinese currency or a composite that they’re producing.”

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Everybody takes their cut…

Kiev Reportedly Can’t Account for ‘Hundreds of Millions’ in Weapons (Reed)

The Zelensky regime spent “hundreds of millions” on weapons which have yet to materialize, according to a damning new [NYT] article which reported serious problems throughout the Ukrainian military supply chain. “Ukrainian government documents show that as of the end of last year,” Kiev’s leaders “paid arms suppliers more than $800 million since… February 2022 for contracts that went completely or partly unfulfilled,” the outlet noted. “We did have cases where we paid money and we didn’t receive,” a deputy Ukrainian defense minister working on arms procurement reportedly confirmed. When weapons do show up, their quality is reportedly a major source of frustration. Video of a “recent delivery of 33 self-propelled howitzers donated by the Italian government…. showed smoke billowing from the engine of one, and engine coolant leaking from another,” according to the outlet.

In a statement, Italy’s Defense Ministry claimed the vehicles were known to have been decommissioned long ago but that the Kiev regime demanded them regardless. The weapons were always meant “to be overhauled and put into operation,” the ministry insisted, given what it called “the urgent need for means to face the Russian aggression.” But the headaches didn’t end there. Efforts to fix the faulty howitzers were complicated by another setback in January after Zelensky’s officials claimed they paid a US company to carry out the necessary repairs, but 13 of them were still “not suitable for combat missions” when received. In a February letter to the Pentagon’s inspector general, Ukraine’s defense procurement director effectively accused Ultra Defense Corporation of defrauding the Kiev regime of millions of dollars, claiming the Florida-based weapons supplier took $19.8 million of Ukrainian government funds with “no prior intention to fulfill its obligations.”

However, the company’s chief executive, Matthew Herring, strenuously denies the accusations. “Every single one of them worked when we delivered them,” he reportedly wrote. In a statement which accused the Ukrainians of failing to maintain the weapons upon their arrival, he noted that one howitzer suffered from a coolant leak which “magically appeared after delivery in Ukraine.” The episode isn’t the only instance where Kiev officials’ stories didn’t exactly match up with the entities they partnered with. The documents, reportedly the product of a government audit this year, “showed that some of the most valuable sets of undelivered contracts are between the Defense Ministry and state-owned Ukrainian arms companies that function as independent brokers.” “In recent months, the ministry has sued at least two of those state firms over unfulfilled contracts, and Ukraine recently announced overhauls aimed at making those companies more efficient,” the outlet reported.

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With all those millions/billions missing, let’s spend more, and faster…

EU Wants to Mandate Arms Makers to Prioritize Orders for Ukraine

The European Union put forward a “temporary emergency measure” which will obligate manufacturers of explosives to prioritize the orders of firms producing ammunition for Ukraine, the military news portal reported on Monday, citing a European Commission spokesperson. “The Commission’s proposal provides for priority rated orders to help manufacturers – for example – with the supply of necessary raw materials where the Commission could ask suppliers to prioritize selling to those manufacturers,” the spokesperson told the outlet. At the moment, the “emergency measure” is getting through the EU’s approval process, the spokesperson was cited as saying.


The initiative has already drawn criticism from a number of member states and private companies that fear the Commission will get too much power assuming the role of regulator of the ammunition market, according to the report. They argue the plan will create conditions for the violation of trade secrets or the disclosure of confidential information. The unnamed Commission spokesperson allayed these concerns by telling that “the Commission has long-standing experience in handling such information in the context of other procedures and has the necessary safeguards in place.” In early May, the Commission announced it would allocate 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) for the production of ammunition for Ukraine. The EU plans to spend another 500 million euros on expanding the production of shells in Europe.

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“German media have mocked it as the ‘Pannenpanzer,’ or “breakdown tank.”

German Armor Too Wide To Transport – Bild (RT)

Germany’s main infantry fighting vehicle, the Puma, is too wide to be transported by train, the outlet Bild reported on Sunday. The IFV has struggled with a variety of mechanical problems since entering service in 2015. “In terms of firepower, the Puma is really good. But the transport is more than suboptimal,” one soldier told Bild. Tracked vehicles such as tanks and IFVs are normally transported to the area of operations by train, in order to save on fuel and track maintenance. Because the Pumas are so wide, their crews need to unscrew their side armor before loading it onto the rail cars – then repeat the procedure in reverse at the destination. A company of 14 Pumas can be “completely loaded and stowed in 24 hours,” a Bundeswehr spokesperson told Bild.

Military experts estimated that transporting an entire battalion of 44 vehicles can take “a few days.” One big bottleneck is a shortage of cranes, but the military said Puma companies will be “equipped with them in the future.” Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann developed the Puma between 1995 and 2009 to replace the older Marder IVF, which Berlin has since supplied to the Ukrainian military. The specifications called for a vehicle that could be airlifted to places like Africa and Afghanistan. “The Puma shows what mistakes were made in procurement,” Andreas Schwarz, a Bundestag member from the ruling SPD, told Bild. “Instead of relying on battle-tested and marketable weapon systems, a panzer was developed according to special requests that is too wide for train transport. That must end.”

Word of the new problems with the Puma comes during a difficult month for the reputation of German armor, as photographic and video evidence from Ukraine showed Leopard 2 tanks provided to Kiev getting destroyed in battles with the Russian military. Berlin paused the purchase of new Pumas last December, after a disastrous exercise that saw one of the vehicles catch fire and all 18 break down. The vehicle is supposed to have superior crew protection and excellent firepower, including a 30mm autocannon and anti-tank missiles. However, German media have mocked it as the ‘Pannenpanzer,’ or “breakdown tank.”

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They’re probably making deals for a Ukraine that includes the Donbass (the richest part) and Crimea. But there will not be such a Ukraine.

BlackRock, JP Morgan Set Up ‘Reconstruction Bank’ For Ukraine (HE)

BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are reportedly aiding the Ukrainian government in setting up a reconstruction bank that could see rebuilding projects being heavily invested in by private entities. The Financial Times noted that it would cost Ukraine roughly $411 billion to rebuild their country amid the onslaught of attacks by Russia, but the cost is continuing to increase. The Ukraine Development Fund is still in the early stages of setting up the reconstruction bank, but potential investors will get an inside preview of how things will look during a London conference that is set to take place this week. With the steep cost to rebuild, the Ukrainian government reached out to BlackRock in November to see if there was a conceivable way of attracting investments. JPMorgan was soon added in February.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed last month that he was working with the two financial institutions and consultants at McKinsey, per the report. Philipp Hildebrand, BlackRock vice-chair, said: “So many of today’s long-term challenges are best addressed through blended finance and this is one. You need these vehicles to mobilise capital at scale.” Though BlackRock and JPMorgan are offering their services, they will likely have the first look at potential investments in the Eastern European country. The report noted that the current development has only deepened JPMorgan’s relationship with its long-standing client, Ukraine. The financial institution has helped Ukraine raise more than $25 billion in sovereign debt since 2010, and it led in the country’s $20 billion debt reconstruction in 2022.

BlackRock has claimed that Ukraine needs a “development finance bank” that would provide the country with infrastructure, climate, and agriculture opportunities. This will apparently make them more attractive to other long-term investors. JPMorgan was added to the venture due to its debt expertise. Stefan Weiler, JPMorgan’s head of debt capital markets in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, said: “The fund is being set up to also give public and private sector investors the opportunity to invest into specific projects and sectors.” “There will be different sectoral funds that the fund identified as priorities for Ukraine. That aim is to maximise capital participation.” However, it does not appear that Ukraine is expected to receive such investments until the end of the conflict with Russia.

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“..if Harris were flat-out forced to resign, then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would automatically become president..”

Strange Days (James Howard Kunstler)

Strange doings at a strange time in a strange land. Videos of widespread military vehicle maneuvers around our nation popped up on the Web at mid-weekend while the American citizenry went about its holiday weekend business (including Father’s Day revels and “Juneteenth” celebration mass shootings): Scenes of armored personnel carriers rolling down Walnut Street in downtown Philly; B2 bomber wings over Minnesota; Tank columns galumphing along a California highway… leading to widespread suspicions that something untoward is up. Durned if I know what’s up. Among things one can know: The “Joe Biden” presidency is whirling around the drain in plain sight, and with it, likely, the Globalist hopes and dreams of making everybody eat bugs while they take away everything you own.

Last week, audiotapes surfaced of the main parties to the Ukraine grift (Biden and Poroshenko) working things out in 2016 over the phone in “JB’s” final days as vice-president. Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee has got its mitts on Biden family bank records galore detailing the abstruse money-laundering activities that were run through obscure European banks and innumerable Biden shell companies. Well, sonofabitch…! It’s getting hard even for Democrats to ignore the accumulating evidence of the Biden family’s global grift operation, and “JB’s” obvious advancing mental deterioration, provoking moves that should lead to his ejection from office. Last week, their captive mainstream news media broadcast a cavalcade of embarrassing public idiocies committed by the Commander in Chief — declaring “God save the Queen” incongruously at the end of a Gun Safety Summit in Connecticut; groping actress Eva Longoria’s boobs after a White House movie screening; cracking a weird joke about the “Philadelphia girl” in his bed (Dr. Jill Biden); being introduced at an I-95 bridge collapse event by brain-damaged PA Senator John Fetterman who tossed up a word salad about the federal “delegadation” aiming to fix “infructure,” while dressed-up looking like Uncle Fester out of The Addams Family. The indignity of it all was really something to behold.

You understand, “Joe Biden’s” reelection campaign is another rank hoax, yet another trip laid on the American public by a desperate, degenerate Democratic Party that doesn’t know what to do next with public opinion souring on it. There’s no way this gibbering near-corpse can run again. He can’t even perform as a puppet anymore. He’s a broke-down engine pulling a train of failure, perfidy, and treason five miles long behind him. The Ukraine war project he presides over looks more and more like an effort to conceal and cover-up his family’s bribery schemes by laying waste to the pitiful chump of a foreign land that went along with the grift — and which, anyway, is winding up as yet another American military humiliation with the Russians finishing off what’s left of Ukraine’s army in the failed “spring offensive.”

Do you suppose that all these military vehicle movements around the country in recent days signal a constitutional crisis in the offing, necessitating martial law? Let me lay it out: Absolutely no one believes that Vice-president Kamala Harris is up to the job of stepping-in when “Joe Biden” gets bum-rushed out of the White House. Nor, I’m sure, are they willing to force her to resign hastily without a substitute vice-president (say, Gavin Newsom) in place — a cumbersome process that requires approval by both the House and Senate (with the Senate split 50-50 and no vice-president to preside over the body with a tie-breaking vote). But if Harris were flat-out forced to resign, then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would automatically become president.

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“..hate speech” includes the reluctance of some people online to use female pronouns when referring to transwomen..”

The New World War On Free Speech (Shellenberger)

The war on free speech is hardly a novel phenomenon, instead mutating over the centuries. What is new, however, is its global aspirations: today, the conflict takes the form of a world war. You can see its shadow in every Western country, from the US and Canada to Ireland and Australia, as well as in every multinational organisation, from the EU to the UN. Rising levels of hate speech and misinformation, we are told, make it more urgent than ever for governments, corporations and multilateral organisations to adopt stronger measures to protect vulnerable populations online. It is for this reason that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security recently created a “Disinformation Governance Board”, the European Commission crafted a new Digital Services Act and Code of Practice on Disinformation, and the UN is proposing a “Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms”.

All of these initiatives are allegedly the product of good intentions; all of them, however, are rooted in the same fallacy: there is little evidence to suggest that hate speech and misinformation are on the rise. On the contrary, Western countries are more tolerant of racial, religious and sexual minorities than ever before. To take one example, the percentage of Americans who approve of marriages between white and black Americans has risen from 4% in 1958 to 87% in 2013 to 94% in 2021. There are, of course, plenty of examples of misinformation and hatred online, and Twitter and Facebook are right to reduce their spread — but often the threat is exaggerated. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), for instance, recently published a study that concluded that antisemitism was increasing on Twitter.

But there is no definitive evidence of rising hate online. The ISD study counted tweets criticising George Soros which didn’t mention his Judaism as antisemitic. Elsewhere, “hate speech” includes the reluctance of some people online to use female pronouns when referring to transwomen — even though one might oppose using female pronouns for natal males and harbour no animus toward transwomen. Here we can see that what people label as “hatred” and “misinformation” is often merely an opinion they don’t like or which they fear will encourage bad behaviour. In both the UK and the US, this led to government officials demanding that social media platforms censor “often-true” content, including about Covid vaccine side effects, out of fear that such stories would result in vaccine hesitancy.

What’s more, Facebook and Twitter have also started deleting a significant amount of true content. Between 2020 to 2021, for example, Facebook censored claims that the coronavirus came from a Chinese lab, even though that was always as likely, if not more so, than the natural-origin hypothesis. Twitter also censored an accurate New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop while allowing supporters of his father, Joe Biden, to falsely claim it was a result of “Russian disinformation”. The global campaign to censor disfavoured views on Twitter and Facebook is therefore rather curious. If there is no evidence that hatred and misinformation are increasing, and ample evidence of inappropriate censorship of true and accurate information, why are politicians across the West calling for greater power to censor?

Read more …

“Congress has also approved the building of a giant elephant statue in D.C. to honor the party responsible for the freeing of slaves from Democrat plantations..”

Juneteenth, The Day Republicans Freed All The Democrats’ Slaves (BBee)

The Senate has unanimously passed a resolution to recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday, commemorating the glorious day Republicans freed the last of the Democrats’ slaves. “We are so proud to show the world how not racist we are by officially recognizing the day the Republicans came charging in to free all our slaves,” said Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer. “Yeah– we Democrats did a little ‘whoopsie’ with that whole slavery thing, but the Republicans corrected it. Thanks, Republicans!” During this year’s Juneteenth, the nation will gather to celebrate the American political party that was founded on protecting human rights of people of all skin colors.


Democrats around the country will write letters of apology and organize celebrations for the vast network of Christians, Catholics, Quakers, and Republicans who fought and died to end the scourge of slavery in America. Congress has also approved the building of a giant elephant statue in D.C. to honor the party responsible for the freeing of slaves from Democrat plantations. Biden has confirmed he will organize a celebration at the White House after he lays a wreath on the grave of his best friend Robert Byrd.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom AI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1670759255044157440

 

 

Baby Hum
https://twitter.com/i/status/1670742749807620096

 

 

Tardigrade
https://twitter.com/i/status/1670749721365733376

 

 

Fibonacci

 

 

Manatee

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle June 20 2023

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 82 total)
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  • #137300

    Vincent van Gogh Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer 1888   • We Need a Peace President (Ron Paul) • Blinken Says US Does
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 20 2023]

    #137302
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Curtis Yarwin, a writer who strikes me as being almost ridiculously smart and educated, has some things to say about communists, progressives, and “seemingly referring to Democrats”:

    “Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists,”

    #137303
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    But… that would mean taking the law into my/our own hands. Don’t you have to get a degree or something to do that?

    #137304
    Germ
    Participant

    When you wreck the immune system of a populace ….

    Canberra hospitals smashed with ‘unprecedented combination of respiratory viruses’

    https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8237147/hospital-smashed-with-unprecedented-combination-of-viruses/#comments

    Comments section is a hoot — “Get vaxxed”

    TVASSF

    #137305
    Germ
    Participant

    BELLATOR’S CRIS LENCIONI IN ICU AFTER SUFFERING CARDIAC ARREST

    “As you can imagine this was completely unexpected considering he is only 28 and in peak physical condition,” Angela Hibbard said on a GoFundMe page set up for Lencioni.

    https://www.tmz.com/2023/06/19/bellator-cris-lencioni-icu-cardiac-arrest/

    TVASSF

    #137306
    Germ
    Participant

    TFN!
    Kids dropping dead at school.

    TVASSF

    #137307
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    In our new digs (we moved a few months ago), a neighbor lady about my age (mid-late 60s) has pancreatic cancer. Doctors are surprised: she doesn’t fit the profile or whatever they associate with pancreatic cancer.

    I didn’t ask her if she was vaccinated. Probably so, and probably the cause of her cancer, which struck two Mays ago, around the time the USA vax campaign was peaked and starting to wind down, but telling her that vax probably caused her cancer would at this point be needlessly stressful and counterproductive to her chances of surviving. Poor dear. I need to learn how to cook tasty food in the narrow dietary spectrum she can handle with compromised digestive capability.

    A quote from the Canberra hospital article:

    “t is appalling to see people in shopping centres coughing and sneezing without tissues, handkerchief or a mask. Then use their hands as a face wipe. This germ collection is transferred to travelator banister rails, grocery items, sorting through fruit and vegetable selections. Hygiene is fundamental.”

    First, there is such a thing as a “travelator”, it seems.

    Second, the reversion to normal public hygiene behavior (“coughing and sneezing without tissues, handkerchief or a mask. Then use their hands as a face wipe”) is probably going to bring out a ton of influenza, quite possibly very virulent. A grey swan coming our way.

    I suspect that Ukraine will prove to be a major hotbed for influenza: “Ukraine’s vaccination program started on 24 February 2021 and from that day to 12 September 2021 18% of the adult population of Ukraine had been vaccinated against COVID-19.[1] (About 44% of those vaccinated had been fully vaccinated.[2][3]) On 7 January 2022 the Ministry of Health announced that 44.9% of the adult population had undergone a full course of vaccination.[4] By 2022, the Ministry of Health plans to vaccinate 70% of the country’s adult population, including 80% of the elderly.[5]”

    Considering the lack of sanitation happening over there, I suspect that Ukraine will simply fold and become a giant Red Cross tent of a nation.

    Hope for Healing

    #137308
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Tyranny:

    Actually, no. The Constitution expressly does NOT say that. That would be illegal. However, the Declaration of Independence does. That would also be the result of Enlightenment thinking, but why go there? It’s also cave man thinking, and it’s been done regularly for all the millennia in between, for reasons far less than today.

    “European Values”

    Luongo points out, there are no “European values”: everyone disagrees. That’s doubly true for “Western values”. So why say the phrase since every day some nation or other disagrees and disproves it? It’s part of the “It’s the sound of the inevitable, Mr. Smith. You will join our club/buy our un-working software/give us your money eventually, so why not today? It’s the right/wrong side of history.”

    No it isn’t. They’re full of crap, their products are s—t, and I’m not “resisting” them – although of course I am – I’m just not so stupid as to buy something that’s garbage, install it in my life, get bled white, then complain about it. It’s not inevitable at all. Say no to dumb ideas and lousy, deceitful products. It ain’t hard!

    “• Blinken Says US Does Not Support Taiwan Independence (JTN)

    It’s an even-numbered day. No, we officially support the “One China” policy and reunification. However, we (they, the insiders) posted Cheng on Formosa in 1949 (or something) as capitalists who will take the country back in a frozen war. So they think Taiwan will invade and back-conquer China (socially). Whatever, dude, you guys still think it’s 1963. “Taiwan Strait?” You do know anyone on the planet can sink every aircraft carrier we own in 10 minutes, right?

    You have less than no chance in the strait or the whole China Sea. Probably no chance of survival until 300 miles past the Philippines.

    ““We have to brace ourselves that the Russian [special military operation] act could last for a long time,”

    With what men? Are they getting birth rates and training Europe to walk in there? Or are you hoping to foot-drag long enough that your Self-driving, AI, Drone-T2-Terminator robots will do it for you? That’s a long time indeed, akin to McCain’s “100 year war”. Especially when AI can’t figure the simplest things and has an existential meltdown every 20 minutes, shooting their owners sometimes (this has already happened).

    “decided to increase defense spending by twp percent of GDP.”

    Yes, but Germany has collapsed and that’s now about $50. Let’s say they were giving $2B on a $40B economy. Now they are a $20B economy, so…$1B. Up that another 2%… You see the math here. It’s not more. It might even be less, down 48%.

    ““The United States has been for decades maintaining a large arsenal of its nuclear weapons in Europe.”

    That is to say, 5,000 miles outside their borders, no possible defense, offensively placed 500 miles from Russia.

    “We lost the wars in Vietnam. We lost the war in Afghanistan. We lost the war in Iraq,” Wolff said.

    The People lost the war. The leaders won those wars. Their bank accounts are bigger than ever, and they have all the power.

    “33%, vs 29%”

    Wildly more than that as the whole West GDP is 1/3 check-kiting using Treasuries and Bonds, and we also mine, grown, make, and do nothing. Selling iPhones is not the same as making them, having jobs to make them, and having the industrial capacity to convert those factories and people to war. They’re a zero. And it’s the times that they had to wait so long to act because the weapons are so dangerous the West would – and has – mash the Nuclear-n-smallpox button until it’s blue. Ask Bush. Muh yellowcake. Depleted Uranium. CovidCovidCovid.

    ““The economic war between Russia and Europe is being lost by Europe, not by Russia, which was not the intent,”

    WAS it not the intent? Are you sure? I remember Trump going there and telling them just before it happened. We said we were leaving, pulling back to “America First”. It’s a strange way to do it, but the other ways weren’t working.

    “paid a US company to carry out the necessary repairs, but 13 of them were still “not suitable for combat missions”

    Classic middle management. “I wrote it on a spreadsheet”. Where do you think the parts come from? The parts fairy? As above, WE MAKE NOTHING. We have no manufacturing, no steel. That means we have no parts factories running, nor munitions, which is impossibly more complicated. (Imagine an assembly line where if you put the door screws in wrong, the whole “B” wing, the whole assembly line, and half the building blows up, and everyone is evacuated for 18 hours while EOD shows up)

    So those guys might be crackerjack and not wasting your time or money at all. They might have hot-rodded that howitzer in no time flat like “West Coast Choppers”. But even they can’t get around no production, no parts.

    “With all those millions/billions missing, let’s spend more, and faster…”

    Yes, exactly. Because they’re not competing in a war, they’re outrunning a debt collapse. That’s compounding interest, and needs clean collateral to hypothecate or die.

    This sort of pyramid speculation is often confused with Capitalism, none of us having seen anything else in our lifetimes, but I assure you, you can create a company and buy new assets with this amazing thing called “cash”, and no debt at all. No debt, no debt collapse. No boom-bust, and no Disaster Capitalism. And who wants that? Then people who work would get rich, instead of people who make nothing. (“I make…nothing. I do…nothing. I own.” — Gordon Gekko, Wall Street.)

    “They’re probably making deals for a Ukraine that includes the Donbass (the richest part) and Crimea.”

    It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter bc that’s reality, and we don’t do that. BlackRock can CLAIM to hypothecate all Ukraine at 300:1. Then they can outrun the debt collapse on their books. So long as the people play along with confidence, the game is in play.

    “German Armor Too Wide To Transport – Bild (RT)

    This wasn’t supposed to be a problem, as the tanks were supposed to STAY HOME, in your own, relatively small country. (article sez otherwise) Same choice with the “Armada” tank. It’s like 2x size, but it’s in China, and the world’s largest continent, so who cares? It’s only if you have to airlift them they need to be smaller. STAY HOME. Defending is way cheaper.

    ““..if Harris were flat-out forced to resign, then Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would automatically become president..”

    Hard to imagine all these things. I’m sure it will go far different. The great part to the White Hats is that it reveals all this to The People, which is painful but necessary.

    “On the contrary, Western countries are more tolerant of racial, religious and sexual minorities than ever before. To take one example, the percentage of Americans who approve of marriages between white and black Americans has risen from 4% in 1958 to 87% in 2013 to 94% in 2021.”

    That’s why they’re more oppressed than ever! and there’s a trans genocide going on while they’re rounding up black people in cattle cars. …Because we’re the most progressive, tolerant, inter-racial society in the last 10,000 years.

    “The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), for instance, recently published a study that concluded that antisemitism was increasing on Twitter.”

    …Thanks to TAE. Just kidding. Translated: ISD says people used “words” on the “internet”. Oooooohhhh! I’m shaking. So did any of these “words” cause any actions, or are Jews still about 100x more tolerated and integrated than any time in the last 1,000 years? Uh, yeah, that.

    We live in #Oppositeland!

    Where’s Lira? Hope to see him appear sometime, not very friendly that everyone just forgot.

    #137310
    Germ
    Participant

    TFN!

    Former Dundalk and Waterford player Karolis Chvedukas dies suddenly aged 32

    https://www.the42.ie/karolis-chvedukas-dies-suddenly-aged-32-6097507-Jun2023/

    TVASSF (tick … tock …)

    #137311
    Germ
    Participant

    Teen who died in hotel bathroom while on Bulgaria holiday had ‘ticking time bomb’ illness, heartbroken cousin reveals

    “Doctors found he had this irregular heartbeat, called cardiac arrhythmia.
    “He was a fit and healthy 19-year-old boy otherwise.
    “It was just one of those things.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22748258/teen-found-dead-hotel-bathroom-no-idea-illness-bulgaria/

    TVASSF (it’s just one of those things LOL)

    #137313

    The people who write are dancing on fingers.
    Much is forgotten, but some of it lingers,
    Gathering like dust in the nooks of the brain.
    Though everything passes, the words will remain.

    #137314
    Oroboros
    Participant

    AI generated potraits

    #137315
    aspnaz
    Participant

    BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are reportedly aiding the Ukrainian government in setting up a reconstruction bank that could see rebuilding projects being heavily invested in by private entities.

    Wow, it is like hyenas after the corpse. At least we know that these companies – who have, more than likely, been running this war scam from the very beginning – are now coming in for the kill. Not evil, just greed, like the people who killed millions to make billions off of a vaccine … looking at you Bill Gates.

    #137316
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Drones are the future of warfare

    Here is a glimpse of WWIII

    Think of a swarm of hornets that can find you anywhere then explode next to you

    Wait for it, it’s coming

    It starts out as entertainment then is evolves with AI at the helm

    #137317
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    When I recently saw an illustration of the flags of the BRICS countries it struck me how extremely unlike one another they are in culture and religion.

    The ‘West’ is comparatively uniform by comparison.

    #137318

    The canary sang too well.
    His cage was moved to hell.

    #137319
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Skynet mini drones

    All seeing

    #137320

    Spartacast #10
    Ted K lauded. MKultra created a martyr.

    #137321
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant
    #137322
    zerosum
    Participant

    Ignorance is fertile ground for manipulation
    —————
    The Biden Administration is sharing your wealth with the Ukraine neo-Nazi

    ————
    ” Making sure Taiwan has the ability to defend itself.” – Blinken
    (Correction – The only threat is from USA)

    “Stand up for the interests and values of the American people.” – Blinken
    (Correction – There are no invasion threat to the USA from anyone)

    The US does not seek conflict or a new Cold War with Beijing, and has no intention of trying to change China’s political system. – Blinken
    (Correction – There are no intention, there are only preparations)
    ————

    #137323
    morongobill
    Participant

    Bernhard @ moon of Alabama thinks the Biden administration may be looking to bail.

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/06/us-admits-defeat-in-war-on-russia-and-china.html#more

    #137324
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The thing that amazes me is that these corporations can get away with stealing a whole country. You know that the wealth gap between rich and poor has become toxic when individuals can hijack the government of millions. Of course, there is only one solution: eradicate the rich by either removing their wealth or killing them. Removing their wealth is difficult, they control the people making the rules. Killing them involves a small army of experts, numbering probably something like 500, to overcome their own private army. Of course, there is the terrorist approach where anyone who works for a billionaire ends up in a ditch with their head in a different ditch: this is the most effective, cheapest and successful method and is why the billionaires tell the government to implement total monitoring of everybody, so that they can rest easy while they fuck you up the ass. Life is complicated, terrorism is effective, which is why the deep state persues terrorism as if it were sin itself.

    #137325
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The Jews used terrorism to get what they have today, what better reference do you need?

    #137326
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    For those of us not paying attention, those docs are referenced in
    https://www.theautomaticearth.com/forums/topic/debt-rattle-june-19-2023/page/2/#post-137309

    #137327
    Alexander Carpenter
    Participant

    aspnaz: The factual statement is “Some Jews used terrorism to…”
    Others didn’t.
    Also, perhaps it’s fair to mention that some
    non-Jews used terrorism to…
    And others didn’t.
    Gosh, how definitive.
    Are you a prisoner of your abstractions? Sure seems that way.

    #137328
    John Day
    Participant

    Substack isn’t working for me today, so this post is just going out on the Google blog this time.

    It is about a Ghandian-Activist USMC Ph.D economist who was at the core of US nuclear strategic decision-making and war planning from Eisenhower to tricky-Dick. He identified as an Ashkenazi Jew, but grew up practicing Christian Science. He was gonna be a grand pianist until his dad fell asleep at the wheel, and Mom got killed.

    #137330
    John Day
    Participant

    Daniel Elsberg’s Sacrifice https://www.johndayblog.com/2023/06/daniel-ellsbergs-sacrifice.html

    Daniel Ellsberg died at the age 92 from pancreatic cancer on June 16, 2023. I’m chagrined that I did not know more about Ellsberg’s life at the heart of American military decision-making until his death brought those stories forward. Daniel Ellsberg was at the core of American nuclear-war strategic planning from the Eisenhower through Nixon administrations.

    Daniel’s mother had wanted him to be a concert pianist, which career he pursued until she was killed in a car accident when Daniel was16. After her death he studied Economics at Harvard, graduating summa cum laude in 1952. That same year he married Carol Cummings ,the daughter of a Marine Corps Brigadier General. then began further studies of Economics at King’s College, Cambridge under a Woodrow Wilson fellowship Those studies were directed towards a Ph.D. upon his return to Harvard. However, in 1954, as the Korean war became fixed in an armistice, Ellsberg joined the US Marine Corps, earning an officer’s commission and serving until 1958, including responsibilities as a Company Commander.

    From 1958 through 1962 Ellsberg worked in Nuclear Strategy at the Rand Corporation, while completing his Economics Ph.D. at Harvard. His Ph.D. dissertation paper in the field of Decision Theory, “Risk, Ambiguity and Decision” was pertinent to economics and the prosecution of nuclear war. It describes what came to be known as the “Ellsberg Paradox”. This describes human aversion to uncertainty of risk. Given choices that are of basically equal risk, humans have a strong proclivity to choose the defined risk over the undefined risk, to choose the known evil over the unknwn evil. This leads to “non-utilitarian” decisions in both economics and war. and may reflect an underlying human assumption of deception risk whenever probabilities are not clearly defined.

    What we know Daniel Ellsberg for is his principled decision to reveal the 7000 pages of analysis he had done on the decision-making pertaining to the Vietnam War in 1967-1968, after he returned from two years in South Vietnam, where he worked for the US State Department. Ellsberg’s detailed analysis, showing pervasive irrationality, dishonesty and graft at all levels of decision making, throughout the war, came to be known as “The Pentagon Papers”.

    In early 1968 the American public was confronted directly with evidence that they had been lied to by the President and the military, and that the US was losing the Vietnam War, when the Tet Offensive broke out, and every major city in South Vietnam became embroiled in street fighting, some falling under Vietcong control. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both assassinated while taking popular anti-war political stances. Ellsberg began attending peace gatherings, while still working for Rand, and was deeply influenced by Ghandian activists from India.

    While listening to a draft resister, Randy Kehler, speak in 1969, Ellsberg was feeling patriotic pride for him and for America, when Randy calmly stated that “he was very excited that he would soon be able to join his friends in prison”. His two year prison sentence was about to commence. Ellsberg experienced a sobbing epiphany from Randy’s profound altruistic action, which brought him to consider revealing his own detailed knowledge of the corruption, immorality and hopelessness of the Vietnam War.

    By the end of 1969 Ellsberg and Rand colleague Anthony Russo had made multiple photocopies of the Pentagon Papers, and Ellsberg was visiting sympathetic Senators, urging them to enter the documents into the Senate record. When this was unsuccessful, he resolved to release the copies to newspapers and to temporarily go into hiding, both of which brought the Pentagon Papers very much to the attention of American voters. These Pentagon Papers, which Ellsberg had created through his research of classified DoD records, embarrassed the government by revealing presidential lies to the American people and also to Congress.

    Following over two weeks of this publicity, with the ongoing release of records still blocked by the courts, Ellsberg surrendered himself, to potentially face 115 years in prison under the Espionage Act, while Russo faced 35 years. The Supreme Court decided that the New York Times could no longer be legally prevented from publishing the rest of the documents, and the Washington Post had also begun publishing them. Senator Mike Gravel entered over 4000 pages of Pentagon Papers into the Senate record.

    In court, the sword hung over Ellsberg’s head as he was prevented from explaining the moral reasons for his actions to the jury. In 1973, after revelations of the burglary of his psychiatrist’s office to read his files, and of other illegal government actions, including offering the judge the directorship of the FBI for convicting Ellsberg, all charges were dismissed by the court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg

    Daniel Ellsberg was a holder of special secrets. Keeping special secrets induces the holder to discount information from those who do not know the secrets, and to lie and mislead them, since sharing the secrets is not an option. He described this effect to Henry Kissinger in late 1968, as Kissinger sought information about the Vietnam War, and was about to gain above-top-secret security clearances. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge/

    Gandhian activism, which influenced Ellsberg, and was the philosophical ground for his epiphany, illustrates the morality of the practitioner, compared to the immorality of the overlord or colonial power. On a deeper, karmic level, the altruistic action of sacrificing one’s own well being or life for the good of others, while selfish power-actors unjustly harm and enslave fellow humans, might even be seen as a form of white-magic.

    #137331
    John Day
    Participant

    In recent years many of us have seen the government lies, this time, almost in lock-step across the world, compelling people to isolate, and preventing them from even learning about effective antiviral therapies for COVID, while preventing their physicians from prescribing effective treatments, or even knowing that they exist. The one path to freedom was promised to be provided by novel gene-therapy vaccines, so people waited patiently, and received these injections with feelings of great relief.

    Others of us in the practice of medicine had done independent research, followed clinical trial preprints when they became available, treated our patients with vitamin-D, zinc, hydroxychloroquine, then ivermectin, and macrolide antibiotics to reduce both secondary bacterial infections and inflammation in the lungs. We did not have special top-secret knowledge, but Pfizer, the FDA and Department of Defense did have it. https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/miscarriages-and-dead-infants-were

    There were leaks showing high rates of miscarriage, which were covered up. Myocarditis in children became apparent in the spring of 2021.and it is now apparent that the “up to date on COVID-19 vaccinations” catch COVID at a higher rate than the “not up to date” https://jessicar.substack.com/p/in-case-you-thought-getting-more

    Some of us have lost our jobs or medical licenses for our treatment of our patients, or our stands for bodily autonomy, against COVID vaccine-mandates, even without researching Gandhian activism.

    It is enough to discern right from wrong, truth from lies, and to stand publicly for truth and to defend human rights.

    #137333
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Human caused pollution is a real thing and a real problem.

    Climate change is not what I’m concerned with.

    Too many people consuming too many resources in a wasteful way has brought down many civilizations.

    When I hear someone say we could fit the population of the world into an area the size of Texas I always reply to them that I could fit 100 rats into their pillow case, do you think anyone will get a good night’s sleep?

    I remember back in the day when the ‘right wing conservatives’ were bitching about environmental regulations that made them clean up their factory’s pollution, you know, when the Empire of Lies actually had factories.

    Pollution is a dishonest business practice

    You are externalizing your costs on to someone else’s balance sheet, namely the general public for the eventual cleanup.

    If your business emits pollution into the general environment, it’s cost shifting and a big lie that your product deceptively only cost X amount.

    No it doesn’t, it cost a lot more, you’re hiding the true cost and are thus a dishonest coward.

    Take solar panels

    The cost of properly recycling solar panels right now in today’s costs added to their purchase price would make them unaffordable and kill the whole industry.

    The down stream pollution and consequences of making solar panels a Big Lie.

    Rationalizing that a proper technique to recycle them will always pop up is bullshit.

    You don’t get to sell a product until a proven way of recycling the inevitably dead product is Present and it’s cost is INCLUDED in the purchase price along with cleaning up any pollution produced in the actual manufacturing process.

    Guess what?

    That makes many, many product a lot more expensive and probably nonviable.

    The pollution laws starting in the 1980’s in the Empire of Lies contributed enormously to the de-industrialization of the country.

    Sure, the Chinese could make stuff much cheaper and thus more cake for you as a business person if you off-shored manufacturing but the Chinese are now running into the same pollution issues and externalizing costs the Empire of Lies ran up against decades ago.

    How to they clean up the toxic waste shithole that is much of the Chinese landscape right now and not talked about much?

    Well simple, they off shore the nasty polluting industries back to the Collective West, like the soon to be 1st world shithole of Eurotardistan, broke, no cheap energy, too many people, and no resources (that’s why they hate all 12 time zones of Russia) .

    Eurotardistan can be China’s new sweatshop.

    Hahahahahahahahaha

    Pretty funny how what goes around comes around.

    .

    #137334
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Eurotardistan® has begun it’s Century of Humiliation© in earnest with the war in Ukronaziland

    The great actual diplomat speaks

    Lavrov Responds To Germany Naming Russia As #1 Threat

    #137335
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Forced degrowth leads to poverty of individuals and households, however…
    Voluntary degrowth can lead to an individual or household to monetary surpluses which can be invested and lead to long term wealth.

    #137336
    kultsommer
    Participant

    A-Carp from yesterday

    Again, sanity requires that we hold people responsible for what they do far more (if at all) than for what they “are,”

    Absolutely true. However, people also notice over-representation that, consequently, makes one group inadvertently “visible”.
    “Less harmful” wide-brush observations are as simple as who “we think are 7-11 or gas station owners or who is most likely to jump after the ball in the basketball court etc…
    Or more serious as how sick it is that Montenegrin minority (trying to put you on ease) holding national money-purse, controls our foreign policy, vetting who the members of Congress and even more so who is our president should be. Cynthia McKinney had a quite a few words about her experience of being forced to sign unquestioned allegiance to that country that she refused which did cost her political career.
    Case of buckling-down before that nasty little prick country:

    #137341
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    I would like to exhume and reply to a comment that came up yesterday, and so will start by quoting its key line:

    “human behavior is driven by profit . . . (etc).”

    My reply is that no, it isn’t. Or at least it is not driven by profit exclusively or mainly.

    I say that because the so-called profit motive accounts for less than half of the picture regarding the motivations of human behavior. Sure, it’s undeniably obvious that a big part of what moves us all to action is the need for continued material survival of the organism (which requires a certain amount of “profit” , of taking in more than is given out.) But that’s not all, or even most, of what is going on in this “being a human” business.

    Admittedly, a creature of any kind (homo sapiens included) must turn a “profit” in order to go on living, but first please take special note of a much more fundamental fact : Without its SPIRITUAL nature no creature will even get the chance to attempt living in the first place! A creature without its spiritual component is not actually a “creature” at all. It’s a corpse. A dead body. No life. Dust to dust. Spiritual nature is therefore the defining and most crucial element in the mix.

    Spiritual nature, in contrast to material nature, is not driven by profit. It is driven by conscious truth and love. Put those “drives” (profit & love) together into a single human “person” (who is a truth seeking loving consciousness mistakenly identifying itself as a hungry organic creature that simply MUST kill to eat and defend itself from being eaten, in order to survive) and one winds up with a more or less incompatible amalgamation of two fundamentally contrary basic motivations, neither of which can fully exist without the other.

    Successfully maintaining that arrangement is a delicate balance indeed. In fact, the attempt is doomed to horrible failure UNLESS one is willing and somewhat able to MANAGE both of the two drives order to achieve a dynamically ongoing (and delicate) balancing act that lies, kills and steals ONLY when absolutely necessary for the continuation of the balancing act.

    In exchange for the pain of getting it wrong a lot (by lying, killing and stealing too much or lying, killing and stealing too little) we get to survive for a while in a world that spins along on a course of swirling and yet exquisitely balanced good & bad, truth and lie, pleasure and pain, and so on. In this process we grow spiritually, and slowly slowly slowly discover what a tough job the Author of the Universe has taken upon Himself, and the pain He experiences each and every time we fail, and all done SO THAT WE CAN EVEN HAVE A WORLD TO ATTEMPT, FAIL, LEARN AND GROW IN.

    One can of course opt out of the game at any time by simply choosing not to play. That option is called death, and the Creator has made it very clear in many ways that choosing death is usually not a very good idea in the long run. But He necessarily allows us the free will to do so nevertheless (perhaps as a sort of “pressure relief safety valve”) when we run out of other choices, and He cherishes our existence nonetheless and in every case . . . even for the most resolutely vile and wicked. But ultimately, because there needs to be a world, a Universal field of play, rather than the penultimate bleakness of NOTHING, at all, I believe that He prefers that we choose life, and that we should get on with it and neither turn back, bail out or go rogue.

    The choices, however, must always remain ours to make.

    #137343
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Human caused pollution is a real thing and a real problem.

    Climate change is not what I’m concerned with.

    Too many people consuming too many resources in a wasteful way has brought down many civilizations.

    When I hear someone say we could fit the population of the world into an area the size of Texas I always reply to them that I could fit 100 rats into their pillow case, do you think anyone will get a good night’s sleep?”

    I am not being passive-aggressive, merely blunt, when I say that I love it when you focus your considerable insight, knowledge, and way with words on something other than pissing into the wind (although on a sunny day, it does make cool rainbow effects).

    I agree 110% with the above, and love the 100 rats/pillow analogy. Recognizing this aspect of city life is what put me on the streets at age 16 and had me fleeing, more or less broke, to the hills. I don’t mind so much that we’re all mental patients in something too much lie an experiment gone wrong, i.e., what Pfizer calls ‘right’. What is hard to handle is that so few of us realize that a) we’re nuts and b) live in a global psych ward run by c) guys in White Coats wearing White Hats practicing malicious medicine because d) they, too, are nutso mental patients.

    Welcome to the Monkey House

    #137344
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Corporations taking over government was a natural evolution of democracy i.e. humanity. (Hominid evolution is a democracy run by human agency under a genetically-defined constitution.) People vote with their money far more than their suffrage. We will financially reward any entity that gives us more for less even if it ruins our parent’s mom’n’pop business. Ruthless* entities seeking profit uber alles use this to herd us all the way to the fleecing banks and slaughter houses (war, for example).
    *many maybe most of them unconsciously so… and after all, how can you be good at bullshitting the masses if you can’t bullshit yourself?

    But we pay their way by opting for the best deal, because goldarn it, I work HARD for mah munnee! An unhappy family is okay if it has money, and a happy family is still looked down on if it’s poor.

    We put the corporations in charge, not the government. Gubmint goes broke if unfunded, hence mandatory taxes. But we voluntarily concentrate our wealth into the control of the corporate few. All that funny money the Fed prints means nothing if people don’t circulate it, right? They could give their .0001% crony favorites money all day and it would do no good if we didn’t accept it as payment from them (good-paying jobs, for example) spend it on them (Ford employees being able to buy their own cars was, as Ford always said, just good business savvy) or reinvest it back into them (petro peasantdollar recirculation.

    The tower of greed is composed of living beings. Like an enormous gymnast pyramid. Said living beings being you and I (all other living beings being the suffering sentient mush bleeding under our weight). No one wants to leave the pyramid. Having done so myself, in the process socially and economically crippling myself in weird ways hard for people to understand, I can attest that it is indeed painful in many ways… but oh so very rewarding in others. I wouldn’t go back and change a thing (except riding down that hill in a giant tractor tire tube and breaking my wrist from it. Ruined me as a drummer and I can’t hold a boogie-woogie pattern in my piano left hand for shit cuz of it.)

    Omnipotent Left Hand

    #137349
    zerosum
    Participant

    degrowth is depopulation

    #137353
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @aspnaz

    You write : “The Jews used terrorism to get what they have today, what better reference do you need?”

    Well, you’re getting a teensy bit closer, but still have a serious juxtaposition error in your thinking.

    The correct statement requires the swapping places of just two words, and then you’ll have it.

    Here’s how it should read:
    The Terrorists used Jews to get what they have today, what better reference do you need?

    C’mon, aspnaz, you have an excellent intelligence, try stretching it beyond the self-imposed limitations of your prejudices.

    #137355
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Yep!

    Human caused pollution is a real thing and a real problem.

    and:

    Too many people consuming too many resources in a wasteful way has brought down many civilizations.

    Is what I always thought is the problem.
    “Climate change”, regardless if real or not, is more likely, hoisted on us as a control tool.
    I may also add that overpopulation with so many people without some kind of “achievable goal” opportunity or, at lest, any job to sustain their existence leads to rampant crime.

    #137357
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “In exchange for the pain of getting it wrong a lot (by lying, killing and stealing too much or lying, killing and stealing too little) we get to survive for a while in a world that spins along on a course of swirling and yet exquisitely balanced good & bad, truth and lie, pleasure and pain, and so on. In this process we grow spiritually, and slowly slowly slowly discover what a tough job the Author of the Universe has taken upon Himself, and the pain He experiences each and every time we fail, and all done SO THAT WE CAN EVEN HAVE A WORLD TO ATTEMPT, FAIL, LEARN AND GROW IN.”

    This is pretty much my essential take, too.

    ***

    A general message, replete with mispelling:

    ***

    from comments on the Greenwald/RFK, Jr. debate:

    “Kennedy’s explanation is as clear as mud. It is obvious he knows if he dares to cross the Israel lobby, it will ruin him and his candidacy. Criticizing Israel in ANY MANNER is a third rail. radioactive position, as Kennedy says.”

    You can tell that Bobby Jr. is struggling with the Izzy thing. Politics is making deals, and in late-stage imperial politics, deals with the devil are part of that negotiation suite.

    RFK has an aspect the other candidates don’t. He already takes measures (he says) to avoid CIA assassination. Perhaps he doesn’t want to anger Mossad. Maybe Mossad is part of his protection package? Strange bedfellows.

    He is obviously having a hard time selling the half-truths he does in the Greenwald video. He’s literally choking from the effort.

    I like this guy’s take: Third Rail Burns

    I confess to enjoying, if only superficially like a slight breeze on sweaty skin, a flush of optimism watching BobbyJ. Nothing I want to take to the bank but enjoyable nonetheless. Maybe that’s why he reminded me of Lando Calrissian muttering, “This deal stinks worse all the time.”

    BobbyJ doesn’t enjoy being a quisling. It seemed physically painful to him. Maybe he’ll do something surprising. I’m in the mood for a surprise.

    #137358
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Experimento:

    babaganoujski il cicitarita monsieur

    Money and war go hand in hand, as we all know. War arises from surplus, rarely from lack. (Lack is more prone to produce highwaymen and such. Outlaws.) Unneeded wealth, like a standing army, gets its “owner” (ha!) into mischief. Slavery is virtually impossible without money, for with or without money, you need to have a well-ordered society in order to hold and control slaves, and we don’t know HOW to have well-ordered societies, beyond 150 people max, without money. (This is based on me accepting Dunbar’s # as proven theory, even fact, so your mileage may vary on that one.)

    But my remark is still true even without Dunbar’s Number, because today it is factually true: we all require money to socioeconomically exist. Show me the money is the quintessential credibility of civilized homo sapiens for at least 5k years. Work done on the basis of mutually shared trusting cooperation and sharing of harvest is SO neolithic, man.

    We rail against capitalism or socialism oo la la when it’s ALL moneyism. (This is one thing, probably the only thing, that compulsive chew-bankstah bashers get right.)

    One needn’t believe in Jesus as a literally supernatural (and divinely endorsed) superhero to see that He knew some serious shit about society: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Some people say they use money only cuz they have to, but chronic usage is love just as a happy marriage is doing the same things over and over (especially boinking) so long as those things are decently good or at least not too bad. I tell my tribe that family is a function of frequency and proximity, not intent or sentiment or heritage. A man who sees the same whore frequently is entering into some kind of serious romantic relationship whether either of them admit it or not, whether she reciprocates the feeling or not.

    Judging money by its frequency/proximity to our lives and hearts, I see money as our essential Family of Man. In God We Trust, but in money we believe and act with the trust sense of certainty we accord gravity. We are absolutely, completely, head-over-heals in love with what Lester Young first coined (oops) as “dough*.”
    *about upcoming gigs, he’d say, “The work is good but how does the dough rise?” He didn’t want to work for no flatbread.

    Money-love may be a love born of Stockholm syndrome, but it’s love. There are, I believe and know first hand, better forms of love. Not just at home where we still have some semblance of a clue, but love at large.

    Seeing as how our currency/economy/most everything is crashing, we might want to start exploring what that other form of love at large might be.

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