Jul 112023
 
 July 11, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Gustave Doré Over London — By Rail 1872 (woodblock)

 

China Ready To Contribute To Build Stable World Jointly With Russia – Xi (TASS)
41+ Countries Returning To Gold Standard (QTR)
Anti-Russian Sanctions Spooking Countries Into Repatriating Gold Reserves (RT)
US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)
Vaudevillian Visitors in Vilnius (Sp.)
Zelensky Can Expect Military Aid Guarantees From NATO Summit at Best (Sp.)
Ukraine In NATO Is ‘Path To Peace’ – FM (RT)
US State Dept Has Become ‘Ministry Of Truth’ – Moscow (RT)
Erdogan Ties Sweden’s NATO Bid To Türkiye’s EU Membership (RT)
Putin Held Meeting With Prigozhin, Wagner Commanders June 29 -Kremlin (Sp.)
Prigozhin’s War (Lauria)
US Cluster Munitions to Ukraine Can Lead to Humanitarian Problems – China (Sp.)
Ukraine Stepping Up Mercenary Recruitment Effort – Russian MOD (RT)
Welcome to Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness” (Turley)
UK Parents Prosecuted for Refusing to Pay for Transgender Treatments? (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Baby myocarditis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678475139841662996

 

 

 

 

Luft
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678528304616226816

 

 

BRICS

 

 

 

 

“..mutual assistance, deep integration, innovation and pioneering, as well as mutual benefit.”

China Ready To Contribute To Build Stable World Jointly With Russia – Xi (TASS)

Beijing is ready to join efforts with Moscow to contribute to building a prosperous, stable and just world order, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said on Monday. “China is ready to continue working with Russia <…> in order to contribute to developing and reviving both countries as well as to build a prosperous, stable and just world order,” China’s CCTV quoted Xi as saying at a meeting with Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko in Beijing. Xi said that, in the new era, his country was ready to continue developing the comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation with Russia which imply “mutual assistance, deep integration, innovation and pioneering, as well as mutual benefit.”

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“That’s one she’s going to want to take back at some point, I’m certain.”

41+ Countries Returning To Gold Standard (QTR)

Remember back when the Russia/Ukraine war had just started, and I predicted that Russia and China would launch their own gold backed currency? At the time, this idea sounded completely foreign, and I was ridiculed for bringing it up. Today, it just become reality. 41+ countries look like they could be returning to a gold standard. The images plastered all over RT this weekend had headlines like “New Money, New World” and “Gold Standard Will Be Of Great Benefit To Strengthening New Singly Currency”. “The official announcement is expected to be made during the BRICS summit in August in South Africa,” Kitco reported over the weekend. “At first glance, a new transaction unit, backed by gold, sounds like good money – and it could be, first and foremost, a major challenge to the US dollar’s hegemony,” Thorsten Polleit, chief economist at Degussa, said.

He continued: “For making the new currency as good as gold, a truly sound currency, it must be convertible into gold on demand. I am not sure whether this is what Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have in mind. Using gold as money, the unit of account would be a true game changer, no doubt about it. It could lead to a sharp devaluation of many fiat currencies vis-à-vis the yellow metal (including the BRICS fiat currencies), and it could catapult up goods prices in terms of fiat currencies. It could be a shock to the global fiat money system. I am not sure that this is what the BRICS wish to achieve.” The official announcement of the new currency is expected in August during the BRICS summit in South Africa.

Even more shocking than the announcement is the cavalier attitude that United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appears to be taking to the news. In statements I can only describe as completely delusional, Yellen said this weekend: “I just want to reiterate what I’ve said in the past, which is I think the United States can rest assured that the dollar is going to play the dominant role in facilitating international transactions and serving as a reserve currency in the years ahead. I don’t see that role being threatened by any development including the one that you’ve mentioned [BRICS common currency].” That’s one she’s going to want to take back at some point, I’m certain.

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“’If it’s my gold then I want it in my country’”

Anti-Russian Sanctions Spooking Countries Into Repatriating Gold Reserves (RT)

An increasing number of countries are bringing home their bullion reserves in the wake of unprecedented sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, Reuters reported on Monday, citing an Invesco survey of central bank and sovereign wealth funds.According to the report, widespread losses for sovereign money managers resulting from last year’s financial market rout made them “fundamentally”rethink their strategies amid fears of higher inflation and further geopolitical tensions. The survey showed that over 85% of the participating 85 sovereign wealth funds and 57 central banks believe that inflation will now be higher in the coming decade than in the last.

A “substantial share” of central banks were reportedly concerned by the precedent set by sanctions on Russia. Almost 60% of respondents said it had made gold more attractive, while 68% were keeping reserves at home, compared with 50% in 2020. “’If it’s my gold then I want it in my country’ (has) been the mantra we have seen in the last year or so,”according to Invesco’s head of official institutions, Rod Ringrow, who oversaw the report. Confirming Ringrow’s assessment, one central bank told Reuters anonymously: “We did have it (gold) held in London… but now we’ve transferred it back to [our] own country to hold as a safe haven asset and to keep it safe.”

Nearly half of Russia’s $640 billion worth of gold and forex reserves were frozen by the West last year, included in numerous rounds of sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine. Moscow has condemned the freezing of its assets, describing the West’s plans to expropriate those funds as theft and warning of retaliatory measures. The Ivesco study showed that geopolitical concerns, combined with opportunities in emerging markets, have also triggered a shift among some central banks away from the US dollar. Of those surveyed, 7% reportedly believe that mounting US debt is also negative for the greenback, but most still see no alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

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The military industrial complex is making a killing.

US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)

The US and Europe may have the military budgets which far outstrip those of their global rivals, but there are multiple factors helping to explain their depletion and inability to expand production, retired. Major General Vallely, the chairman of the Stand Up America Foundation, a US advocacy and non-profit, told Sputnik. “As you know, when the Americans surrendered in Afghanistan, we left $85 billion-worth of equipment, ammunition, guns, tanks, helicopters, artillery. $85 billion is a lot. That would arm an entire country for years,” Vallely explained. Secondly, the US defense sectors “sells a lot of equipment to other countries – some 50 different countries,” which means not all its resources can be concentrated on one task, like flooding arms into Ukraine.

“And the third reason is the amount that we have sent into Ukraine, including what we called ‘prepositioned’ equipment in Europe. Those resources are depleted. So the American defense industry can’t keep up with demand now. We don’t have the manufacturing capability to keep up with what’s being used and what is needed in the future. The same goes for the European countries,” the senior officer said, pointing out that much of the weapons and equipment given to Kiev over the past year-and-a-half have been destroyed. Vallely also pointed to political, economic and social factors to account for the shortfall, saying many NATO countries, particularly in Europe, “are sort of reluctant” to keep pumping their military equipment into Ukraine with no end in sight.

Instead, they’ve actually “slowed down their production, I think, and also the amount of supplies that they’re giving Ukraine, because they want to keep a lot of that, at least some for themselves. So those are all reasons why we see this shortage and it’s going to continue,” he said. Major European NATO powers such as Germany, Italy and the UK have spent months warning that the stocks of weapons they have left after splurging on Ukraine would be enough to withstand just “48-72 hours” of combat in the event of a surprise invasion or other major conflagration. In the UK, defense officials complained privately back in January that the military had been “hollowed out” by arms shipments to Kiev, and London’s reluctance to up defense expenditures.

In spite of talk among NATO members about record defense budgets, Vallely doesn’t expect the alliance to be able to substantially ramp up production capabilities over the coming months and years. “I don’t think they want to. It costs the countries a lot of money to build this equipment. And you have an ailing economy in Europe and the United States. They can print all the money they want to, but still you have to build these things and it takes a lot of time,” he said. On top of that are resource constraints, including the rare-earth minerals the US has come to rely on China for but which Beijing has recently indicated it would be trimming down amid the ongoing trade war with Washington, Vallely said.

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NATO must deliver this week. But all they have is words. Bonuspoint for the headline.

Vaudevillian Visitors in Vilnius (Sp.)

The crisis in Ukraine is in many respects the consequence of the Western alliance’s decade-and-a-half long quest to pull Kiev into the bloc, despite repeated warnings by Russia that Ukrainian NATO membership was a “red line” for Moscow. The alliance first welcomed Ukraine’s “Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership” at its 2008 summit in Bucharest, Romania. Two years later, the pro-Western government in Kiev was replaced in democratic elections by the government of Viktor Yanukovych, who pledged Kiev’s bloc neutrality. Four years after that, in 2014, Yanukovych was overthrown in a US-backed coup d’etat, with the crisis prompting Crimea to break off from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, and sparking a bloody conflict in Donbass. Moscow attempted to mediate the crisis over eight years through the Minsk peace accords, a comprehensive, 12-point peace deal calling for broad autonomy for Donbass as part of Ukraine.


Successive governments in Kiev dragged their feet on the Minsk deal’s implementation. In the meantime, in 2019, Ukraine’s parliament amended the country’s constitution to cement Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO and the European Union. In December 2021, as war clouds gathered over Donbass, Moscow attempted one final push to prevent the escalation of the Ukraine crisis into a Russia-NATO proxy conflict, proposing comprehensive security agreements to the US and the alliance to reduce tensions, including a request for a commitment from the Western alliance not to allow Ukraine to join the bloc. The alliance refused, saying it would never reject its “open door” policy. Several weeks later, amid Russian intelligence reports that Kiev would try to resolve the Donbass crisis by force, Moscow kicked off its special military operation.

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“NATO member states cannot use security guarantees as an alternative to Ukraine’s membership in the bloc.”

Zelensky Can Expect Military Aid Guarantees From NATO Summit at Best (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky can expect from the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius on Ukraine’s admission to the alliance is guarantees of further military aid at best, Konstantin Gavrilov, the head of the Russian delegation at the military security and arms control talks in Vienna, said in an interview with Sputnik. Zelensky continues to bend his line that he needs Western weapons and military equipment under the pretext of a confrontation with Russia, the diplomat said, adding that is why Zelensky has long hinted that he would like an accelerated process of joining NATO. The UK and the US, however, have made it clear that the necessary criteria must be met for this.


“The best that Zelensky can expect [from the summit] is guarantees of further military assistance and supplies of ammunition,” Gavrilov said, adding that “the fact that a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council will be held during the NATO summit is just a nod to Kiev and nothing more.” On Monday Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “NATO member states cannot use security guarantees as an alternative to Ukraine’s membership in the bloc.” The Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius will host the NATO summit from July 11-12. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will chair the meeting. Discussions on Ukraine’s NATO prospects, strengthening the alliance’s eastern flank and defense spending are expected to top the summit’s agenda. On June 19, Stoltenberg said that the summit would not discuss a formal invitation, but rather ways to “move Ukraine closer to NATO.”

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War is peace.

Ukraine In NATO Is ‘Path To Peace’ – FM (RT)

Inviting Kiev into NATO will create peace in Europe, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba argued on Monday, during an interview with the German public broadcaster ARD. Kiev was “promised entry” in 2008, but Germany and other Western European countries got cold feet, Kuleba told the Tagesschau newscast on Monday. The upcoming Vilnius summit of the US-led military bloc is the time to correct that “mistake,” he added.“We appreciate everything that Germany and the US are doing for Ukraine to support us in this war,” Kuleba added, but disagreed with Berlin that the invitation into NATO would drag the West into open war with Russia. The invitation is simple “a political message to Ukraine” and Article 5 – the mutual defense clause – “only applies if Ukraine is a member country.”

“Ukraine’s NATO membership is a path towards peace. Once Ukraine can join NATO, there will be no more wars in Europe,” Kuleba claimed, because “Russia will no longer dare to attack the alliance.” Although Kiev’s bid is strongly supported by the Eastern European and Baltic states, the leaders of Western Europe and the US have opposed making Ukraine a full-fledged NATO member. In a CNN interview over the weekend, US President Joe Biden reiterated that Washington is against admitting Ukraine into NATO and offered “Israel-like guarantees” instead. “Why does everyone always want to put Ukraine in a separate pot?” lamented Kuleba. “Why are people always looking for alternative solutions? Why can’t we simply develop a holistic solution for a European security architecture in which Ukraine sits in the NATO boat?”

He went on to insist that Ukraine is “a win” and not a burden, because “without our army, the eastern flank [of NATO] could not be defended at all.” Kiev will not accept guarantees as a replacement for membership, Kuleba added, but only as an interim measure. The US and its allies have spent over $100 billion just in 2022 to provide Ukraine with weapons, equipment, ammunition and even cash, while insisting they were not a party to the conflict with Russia. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov has argued on multiple occasions that his country was already “de facto” a member of the Western alliance and “carrying out NATO’s mission” with theblood of Ukrainian soldiers.

No NATO membership for Ukraine was one of the key demands in Russia’s collective security proposal sent to Washington and Brussels in December 2021. Biden also revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had presented that condition at their July 2021 summit in Switzerland – but that he refused, citing NATO’s open-door policy. Moscow considers NATO’s eastward expansion as a threat to Russia’s national security and has cited Kiev’s ties to the bloc as one of the root causes of the current armed conflict with Ukraine. Russian officials have argued that Ukraine’s neutrality would be one of the necessary prerequisites for a lasting peace between the two countries.

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Yup, more Orwell.

US State Dept Has Become ‘Ministry Of Truth’ – Moscow (RT)

US authorities are urging the country’s media outlets to propagate falsehoods about Russia in a bid to undermine its stability amid the ongoing stand-off between Moscow and the West, the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed. In a statement on Monday, the agency quoted its director, Sergey Naryshkin, as saying that “the US State Department … basically dictates to the American media what exactly they should write and say,” adding that it “has finally turned into the ‘Ministry of Truth’.” The comment was an apparent reference to the fictional ministry tasked with falsifying historical events from George Orwell’s world-renowned dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.

The SVR, citing intelligence data, claimed that last month the department sent instructions to several major media holdings, including AT&T, Comcast Corporation, Graham Media Group, Nash Holdings, Newsweek Publishing and The New York Times Company, telling them to “reflect events in and around Russia in a distorted manner.” According to the agency, these outlets were tasked with convincing Russian citizens that there was a need for a “forceful struggle against the authorities, up to an armed rebellion.” They also wanted to “involve the population in protest actions” by “actively circulating falsehoods” about Russia’s purported weakness and its “inevitable defeat in the stand-off with the West,” the statement read.

To achieve this goal, Washington has told media organizations to focus on packaging certain narratives to young Russians, as well as hailing Russian opposition figures and other nationals engaged “in sabotage and terrorist actions” against Moscow as heroes, the agency claimed. “There is nothing new in freedom of speech being trampled on in the West. It is unfortunate that the State Department, which used to be a sober-minded and rational agency … has turned into a stinking landfill of informational garbage,” the SVR added. The statement comes after Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov predicted in April that the level of “external interference” into Russia’s domestic affairs would only grow amid the Ukraine conflict. He also suggested that the West would be interested in derailing Russia’s presidential elections, which are scheduled for March 2024.

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The EU will never accept a muslim nation as a member.

Erdogan Ties Sweden’s NATO Bid To Türkiye’s EU Membership (RT)

Ankara will sign off on Sweden’s accession to NATO if the EU “opens the way” to membership for Türkiye, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. Erdogan has reportedly asked US President Joe Biden to help pressure Brussels into accepting Türkiye into the European bloc. “Türkiye has been waiting at the door of the European Union for over 50 years now, and almost all of the NATO member countries are now members of the European Union,” Erdogan told reporters before flying to NATO’s summit in Lithuania. “Come and open the way for Türkiye’s membership in the European Union. When you pave the way for Türkiye, we’ll pave the way for Sweden as we did for Finland,” he added.

Sweden, Finland, and Türkiye agreed last summer that Ankara would approve the two Nordic nations’ applications for NATO membership if both granted a number of key concessions to Ankara. Sweden and Finland promised that they would lift arms embargoes on Türkiye, extradite alleged Kurdish and Gulenist terrorists, and crack down on the activities of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) within their borders. Türkiye’s parliament signed off on Finland’s application in March, but Erdogan maintains that Sweden hasn’t fulfilled its end of the bargain. In a phone call with Biden on Sunday, the Turkish president claimed that Sweden still allows “terrorist organizations” – referring to the PKK – to demonstrate on its streets, according to a readout of the call from Ankara.

Erdogan also told Biden that Türkiye expects a “clear and strong message of support” from NATO leaders for its EU membership at this week’s summit in Lithuania. A readout of the call from the White House made no mention of this request. Erdogan is set to hold talks with Biden and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson while in Lithuania. sAsked about Erdogan’s comments, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the Associated Press that Türkiye’s accession to the EU was not a part of the deal that Sweden, Finland, and Türkiye signed last year.

Stoltenberg insisted that Sweden has fulfilled its obligations, and that it is “still possible to have a positive decision” on its accession to the military bloc during this week’s summit. Türkiye applied for EU membership in 1987 and was recognized as a candidate in 1999. Membership negotiations opened in 2005, but progress was slow, and no talks have taken place since 2016. Brussels has since condemned Erdogan over alleged human rights abuses, and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament warned in a 2017 report that constitutional reforms strengthening his powers could run afoul of EU law and threaten Ankara’s membership bid.

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“Putin listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them further employment options..”

Putin Held Meeting With Prigozhin, Wagner Commanders June 29 -Kremlin (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting in the Kremlin with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner PMC and the group’s commanders to discuss the events of June 24, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. “Indeed, the president had such a meeting. He invited 35 people to it. All group commanders and company management, including Prigozhin. This meeting took place in the Kremlin on June 29 and lasted almost three hours,” Peskov told a briefing. The details of the meeting are confidential, but both Putin and Wagner commanders gave an assessment of the June 24 events, the spokesman said.

“The only thing we can say is that the president gave an assessment of the company’s actions at the front line during the special military operation, and also gave his assessment of the events of June 24. Putin listened to the explanations of the commanders and offered them further employment options,” Peskov said. Commanders of Wagner told Putin that they are his staunch supporters and are ready to continue fighting for Russia, the spokesman concluded. On June 23, forces of the Wagner Group (PMC) seized the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District in the city of Rostov-on-Don, following accusations leveled against the Russian Ministry of Defense for allegedly striking the group’s camps. Both the Russian military and the Federal Security Service have denied the allegations.

The next day, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko revealed that he had spent the entire day negotiating with Yevgeny Prigozhin, as agreed upon with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a result of the talks, the Wagner group leader accepted Lukashenko’s proposal to stop the movement of his troops in Russia and take measures to de-escalate the situation. Putin guaranteed that the Wagner group fighters would have the opportunity to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, return home, or move to Belarus.

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“..Western governments and pundits clearly suffered more embarrassment from this episode than Putin did..”

Prigozhin’s War (Lauria)

MacGregor disagreed that the former Wagner chief was in cahoots with Russia’s enemies. He said: “I see no evidence that Mr. Prigozhin was made an agent by MI6 or the CIA or anybody else. Anybody who knows the Russians knows that any senior officer or commander or leader is surrounded by numerous FSB informants. The idea that he could have sold out even if he wanted to seems ludicrous.” Ritter pointed out in his CN piece that the Russian government is investigating the matter. If Prigozhin was indeed working for Western or Ukrainian intelligence they clearly did not get what they paid for. Lessons: For Russia: Don’t repeat the mistake of hiring a private army. Several analysts pointed to a 500-year old lesson from Niccolo Machiavelli that Russia ignored:

“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful. … I wish to demonstrate further the infelicity of these arms [i.e., mercenaries]. The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions; but if the captain [i.e., the leader of the mercenaries] is not skillful, you are ruined in the usual way [i.e., you will lose the war].”

MacGregor disputed the whole idea. He told Galloway: “I reject the notion that these people are mercenaries. I would compare them to the French Foreign Legion. The French Foreign Legion consists of large numbers of non Frenchmen in many cases, but they have sworn allegiance to the French state and the French nation, and no one has fought harder and more loyally for France than the French Foreign Legion. I would say you have something very similar in the Wagner group.= These are still Russians overwhelmingly, but there are numbers of Serbs or some Germans or others in the group, and they too have sworn allegiance to the Russian state. And as far as we can tell, none of them thought that they were marching on Moscow to remove Putin.

On the contrary, they saw themselves as going to Moscow to rescue Putin from what was widely considered bad advisors, bad councilors who have held up the Russian offensive and caused this war to drag out beyond the point of reason.” Whether they were mercenaries or not, the Kremlin and the MOD tried to get away with a dodgy legal maneuver and it caused them international embarrassment and nearly a bloody civil conflict. Lessons: For the West: Wait until an operation is over before popping the corks. Cries about a Russian civil war being under way, such as tweets from former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, which blared that “The fight is now on. This is now a civil war,” blew up in their faces when Prigozhin turned tail.

The bigger lesson would be not to meddle in other nations’ internal affairs but that would be too much to ask. The entire Russian nation had rallied around Putin, leaving him in a much stronger position, exposing the continuing line that Russia is now a dangerously unstable nation. Western governments and pundits clearly suffered more embarrassment from this episode than Putin did. But ideologues rarely learn any lessons.

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A soft warning. China speaks in whispers.

US Cluster Munitions to Ukraine Can Lead to Humanitarian Problems – China (Sp.)

Last week, the US unveiled a new military assistance package for Ukraine that includes cluster munitions. The weapons are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which has been ratified by 123 countries, excluding the US and Ukraine. Supplies of cluster munitions by the United States to Ukraine may lead to humanitarian problems, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said on Monday. “Many countries have spoken out against it [cluster munition supplies], irresponsible transfers of cluster munitions can easily lead to humanitarian problems. Humanitarian issues and military security issues must be dealt with in a balanced manner, and the transfer of cluster munitions must be treated with restraint and caution,” Mao told reporters.

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“..a recruitment drive is underway in Argentina, Brazil, Afghanistan, Iraq, and areas of Syria that are “under American control.”

Ukraine Stepping Up Mercenary Recruitment Effort – Russian MOD (RT)

Ukrainian units formed from foreign mercenaries have suffered high battlefield casualties, forcing Kiev to change its approach to finding hired fighters, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday. In a statement, the ministry alleged that the Ukrainian military command views foreign fighters as cannon fodder, sending them into the riskiest missions and placing them at the back of the line when it comes to the evacuation of injured troops. This has made recruiting fighters in European countries such as Poland much harder for Kiev, the assessment claimed. Ukraine has consequently ramped up efforts to find candidates in other parts of the world, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which stated that a recruitment drive is underway in Argentina, Brazil, Afghanistan, Iraq, and areas of Syria that are “under American control.”

The reference to Syria likely concerns the predominantly Kurdish northeastern part of the country. The US supplied Kurdish militias with weapons, training and air support when they served as ground forces for the Washington-led coalition in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). The Pentagon also maintains a military base in eastern Syria, despite the objections of the government in Damascus. The Russian Defense Ministry further claimed that Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in the US and Canada are actively hiring fighters with the help of the CIA and private military contractors under its influence.

Ukraine created the so-called International Legion for what it describes as foreign volunteers fighting for its cause. Moscow considers the fighters to be mercenaries and has repeatedly said that the regular laws of war do not apply to them. The Russian Defense Ministry’s assessment on Monday put the number of foreign mercenaries currently employed by Kiev at 2,029. There are numerous accounts from foreign fighters describing the perils of joining the Ukrainian ranks, including mismanagement by military leaders, corruption with logistics, and the overwhelming risks of engaging Russian forces.

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I’m seeing Orwell eveywhere today:

“..they were unwilling to allow the safety of others “to go to the winds so that people can speak freely.”

Welcome to Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness” (Turley)

“Threads’s rollout coincides with a court ruling that the government’s interventions to censor people on social media represented “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Now, Facebook is offering an alternative to Twitter, with the assurance that users will be protected against any thoughts that Meta’s staff finds problematic. While free speech on Twitter is portrayed as harmful, the company has promised to “prioritize kindness.” That sounds eerily familiar to some of us as a way to deprioritize free speech. Recently, former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on how she and her staff would remove anything they considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging. Rather than using “kindness,” Twitter used undefined standards of “safety” to cancel free speech.

Navaroli declared that they were unwilling to allow the safety of others “to go to the winds so that people can speak freely.” Facebook has long tried to get the public to embrace its role as some kind of speech overlord. Years ago, Facebook rolled out an Orwellian commercial campaign to get the public to embrace censorship. The commercials showed young people heralding how they grew up on the internet and how the world was changing, creating a need for censorship under the guise of “content moderation.” Facebook, they promised, was offering the “blending of the real world and the internet world.”

Facebook is not alone in trying to get people to accept censorship. Recently, after the court ruling, various figures assured the public that they are better off letting corporate and government censors protect them from harmful thoughts. On CNN, Chief White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly went so far as to state that it simply “makes sense” for tech companies to go along with government censorship demands. After this week’s decision, the New York Times immediately issued a panicky tweet that the resulting outbreak of free speech could “curtail efforts to combat disinformation.” For his part, Zuckerberg prefers to just offer “kindness” and “sanity” with few details. Of course, there is a very simple way for Zuckerberg to show that he is committed to free speech: He can release the Facebook Files.

One of the reasons many of us in the free-speech community still support Musk is that he transformed the debate over government censorship by releasing the Twitter Files. For years, politicians and pundits dismissed objections from some of us to government-corporate coordination of censorship as unproven. In Congress, Democratic members attacked witnesses for supposedly lacking proof of censorship, even as they fought to block any investigation that might uncover that evidence. Musk changed all that by showing the public an extensive network of government interventions to support censorship and blacklisting of private citizens. Much of what we know today is derived from the Twitter Files, but surely there is more to learn.

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“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.”

UK Parents Prosecuted for Refusing to Pay for Transgender Treatments? (Turley)

According to the UK’s Code for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), abusive conduct now includes “withholding money for transitioning [and] refusing to use their preferred name or pronoun.” So a parent with familial or religious objections to the transitioning of a child would be required under the law to fund operations or treatments. According to the guidance material, this is not even “an exhausted list,” but some of the first “examples” of potentially criminal conduct that comes to mind. The guideline would suggest that parents with deep-seated religious convictions against transgender status would either have to fund an operation that they consider immoral or face arrest for failing to do so.

To potentially prosecute a parent for refusing to use an adopted pronoun of their child is chilling and wrong. Nevertheless, a CPS spokesperson doubled down with a comment to Fox News that “domestic abuse is a severe crime and leaves victims with a lasting impact . . . This assists prosecutors to ensure that any victim, regardless of who they are, can get justice for the abuse they have faced.” This follows the erosion of free speech and religious rights in Britain, including English courts upholding the criminalization “toxic ideologies.” It was Sir Edward Coke in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628 who declared “For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].” William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham later added:

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.” That no longer appears the case when misusing pronouns or failing to write a check for a child’s transitioning, which will now be treated as the same as physical child abuse. As the definition of abuse is broadened, the state derives greater control and direction over family affairs and relations. Moreover, leaving enforcement to the discretion of police in this “nonexhaustive” list only further undermines this long-standing protection over internal family matters. The question is what the limiting principle will be as the state defines a wider array of conduct to be child abuse. The default assumption of Pitt appears to have flipped in the United Kingdom.

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RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678544638334967809

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle July 11 2023

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  • #138804

    Gustave Doré Over London — By Rail 1872 (woodblock)   • China Ready To Contribute To Build Stable World Jointly With Russia – Xi (TASS) • 41+ Cou
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 11 2023]

    #138805
    Germ
    Participant
    #138806
    Germ
    Participant

    David David David !

    #138815
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Famous Printing. Here’s the bad part: those people are in London because that’s the BEST situation they could find. You should see the countryside when they broke down feudalism, the Lords no longer felt equal fealty as a two-sided contract with the “serfs” and chucked them out of the Highlands, for instance.

    If you know this, you can see in Downton Abbey where them TRYING to be moderately decent to their people nearly bankrupts them a century later, and actually does eventually. The new middle – that Kult would call Capitalists – don’t ALLOW any of that softhearted old-country loyalty to happen. If there’s coal under your peasant’s house, get a solicitor to make something up to chuck them out. When you break all laws and contracts like that, erasing all legal property rights, it’s “Capitalism”.

    “• US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)

    If it hasn’t been said, the cluster bomb fiasco is nothing but this. The U.S., all of NATO, have no 155mm shells. None. Rather than let the guns go silent, — and lose — or like, do something about it like open a factory and create jobs, they are sending the ONLY 155mm shells in existence: cluster bombs, the bottom of the literal barrel. And take a boot right in a face on human rights appearances. So every time you hear “cluster bomb”, hear “Desperate” “Losers” who are “Sapped” and “Out of bullets”.

    “• Vaudevillian Visitors in Vilnius (Sp.)

    Is it just me, or does it say something that the place they’re creating their new schemes is called “Villainous”? I guess “Murdertown” was booked that week?

    “• Zelensky Can Expect Military Aid Guarantees From NATO Summit at Best (Sp.)

    Again with the lies. If they say it, it’s a lie. All words are lies, all implications are further lies. NO THEY CAN’T. “Further” military aid? We just said THEY RAN OUT OF CORE 155mm SHELLS. But it’s okay because we “Promise” some, many years from now? WTF kind of “promise” is that? If you can’t provide them now, you sure as h—l can’t provide them later.

    “The EU will never accept a Muslim nation as a member.”

    You mean Sweden and France, right? The whole EU is atheist, or rather, their new weirdo Woke religion of mass death. They are already a theocracy, so I don’t see them being Christian as a reason they wouldn’t allow Turkey in. And Turkey is barely Muslim, extremely cosmopolitan in type, unlike say Saudi or Pakistan.

    “Welcome to Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness” (Turley)”

    Great. Then they are a Publisher and lose all Sec230. That hasn’t changed. Anyone want to follow the law around here?

    “UK Parents Prosecuted for Refusing to Pay for Transgender Treatments? (Turley)

    Whoops, I guess not. You will be fined and jailed if you don’t force-sterilize your children and cut off your family line forever. Later they’ll write about this like the Late Roman Empire and say “WTF were you guys thinking? Wasn’t it time to dig up the guns yet?”

    Around the Internets:
    “Convicted US Olympics Gymnastics Pedo Stabbed In Florida Prison

    Just after the paper letter from Epstein to him and the blogs begin to be filled with his relationship to Nassar filming it, selling and distributing it, and definitely including (but perhaps with the sex participation of) the high-level people at UPenn. You know: the ones that all the Congressmen were paying for access to?

    Total coincidence, I’m sure. After years safe behind bars before now.

    But yes. Hey, if we very easily know Nassar, AND we know he filmed it, WHO was he filming it for? So, he never shared, sold, including anyone? No? Not even with overwhelming evidence he did? A lot? And was probably paid? A lot? And the courts, the law, the media, nobody ever asked, looked, followed? Not even ooooooonnnneeee tiny step? No?

    Huh. I do not find that suspicious at all.

    To phrase Epstein: Nassar didn’t stab himself.

    Speaking of not suspicious at all: “Putin Held 3-Hour Meeting With Wagner Chief Days After Revolt”

    That’s how you know he was super-mad! That’s a real revolt the Russian commentators say and he was super mad at their treason…so he offered them a super-expensive contract where they hold 10,000 rifles on Russian territory. Yup! Not suspicious at all.

    “BBC Engulfed In Another Child Sex Abuse Allegation Against One Of Its Hosts”

    Like CNN, after knowing, then protecting, then covering for, several producers/employees who are active, “Let’s find, convince, and pay them” 8-year old pedophiles; THEN they panned the most popular movie out today because it was against pedophilia and human trafficking. …Along with Rolling Stone, who said, “Protect Pedophiles? Hold my beer.” Ah Rolling Stone! That’s the values you were founded for, right?

    “Why Do You Support Child Trafficking?” Rolling Stone Slammed over Negative ‘Sound of Freedom’ Review.
    The same Rolling Stone that covered for accused pedophile James Gordon Meek”

    Along with NY Times, WSJ, NPR. Yup! No Epstein flight list! …Which is actually public information, it’s not hidden at all. They just won’t publish it.

    “Macron was afraid the US would abandon the Ukrainians to save itself. There was the same fear among the Germans and British, Attali added. “The weak point is what happens in Washington.”

    Huh. But I thought the U.S. was running it all! Europe is a helpless baby, doing whatever they’re told. Now Europe is afraid that Biden/U.S. WON’T tell them to do this? That they’d be exposed as making actual decisions with actual preferences? …To attack, conquer, and steal all Russian resources for European consumption, and using America’s army to do it.

    “in two weeks Ukrainians will be able to overcome the Russian support band and start storming their main line of defense, while maintaining the offensive potential of their strongest brigades. Perhaps that’s what General Milley meant”

    Sure man, sure. And Russia is incapable of noticing this and will just sit around and not, I dunno, level Kiev with one bomb or something. Still, I’m glad the Ukrainians finally found something, however poor. You do know these successful “mosquito” attacks are essentially “human wave” attacks and are called “mosquito” for a reason.

    “Turkey Suddenly Agrees to Advance Sweden’s NATO Bid”

    We finally found what this is, Putin is shelling the crap out of Erogan in Syria. Because wtf are they doing in Syria??? Turkey SAID they would pull out, but won’t. He thinks he can 1) get the billion dollar pipeline and 2) Solve his Kurd problem. While 3) getting paid by NATO to screw Putin. Okay man. Give ‘er a go.

    Breathtaking long interview with softball journalist: “Putin is a dead man walking’ | Bill Browder

    Yes, Mr. Browder, but exactly how dead IS Putin? and by how much WILL Ukraine win the war? I’d love to go over all 30 minutes of it, but since every two words, of every sentence, is a provable lie, using every trope (dictator, strongman, failed state) we’ve ever heard, all rolled into one, it would take about 90 pages. And nobody wants that. Just know this is the apex, the magnum opus, of Western nonsense. All we need is a nuclear war, he says. Easy! (Literally. He says it’s that simple.)

    Who is Bill Browder? He’s the guy who was supposed to chop up, sell off, and rule Russia from the West. Life expectancies plummeted like 10 years, that is, nation-wide mass murder and slow genocide, mafia violence was nationwide, living standards near zero. But he put Putin in charge and blew it. Suddenly under the terrible (elected) dictator Putin, life expectancies steadily rose. Crime steadily fell, oligarchs were steadily brought to heel under the steadily stronger Russian state. Russia became peaceful, normal, and even prosperous. Now it’s a world power leading the Global South out of similar colonialization by the Anglos. So…Bill…I hear you’re a moron, a serial loser, and trying to get your country back. Maybe the interviewer should have mentioned that?

    But even clicking if you don’t have 32 minutes, look at the linked videos:
    “Putin’s army destroyed by his own ‘Maskirovka’ | Philip Ingram
    “Putin’s Army Riots”
    “Russia Rebellion: Putin is losing grip on power- and he can’t make Prigozhin a martyr”
    “Ukraine identifying where to ‘slice through’ Russian defences
    “Putin Doesn’t care about his soldiers dying: Bill Browder”
    Which is why everyone agrees Russia is painfully and perhaps counterproductively harboring all his men and preventing all losses.
    “The End of Russia – Could Wagner Group Overthrow Putin” Yes, that was 13 hours ago. Still at it, learned nothing. “The Power of Positive Thinking!!!” Answer: No. They cannot.
    “Prigozhin spotted in Russia is a ‘nightmare scenario for Putin’ |
    “Bill Browder: The future of Russia after the war

    He literally says we’re going to chop them up, erase their army, and never allow them to have power again. I’m sure Russia will now surrender and come to the negotiating table immediately and not like Nuke the whole West instead or nothin’.
    “Anti-Putin activist Bill Browder says a ‘purge of monumental proportions’ is coming to Russia”
    That was two weeks ago. Where’s the purge? Bill now says it’s the LACK of purge that shows Putin is weak.

    This is the sort of guy I mean when I say it’s impossible to be discredited. On and on for 18 months, 8 years, 20 years, wrong every time, wrong at every turn, wrong about everything. Wrong that destroyed Germany and with the Paris riots, all of Europe. Wrong that costs us $150 Billion dollars and our entire empire. Wrong that means kids die of drinking water in Flint. Yet nothing. He’s an “Expert” doncha know? Can’t you see my white coat?

    He did say something interesting. Well, first he said “Prighozhin is Russia’s top military expert.” Uhhhh…Prighozhin is a caterer. That’s said all the time. He never served the military, he’s a businessman, a money guy. He knows literally nothing about war. Then Bill said, “After the raid on his St. Petersburg apartment, Putin gave all his stuff back, including the money.”

    Uh-huh. And Putin’s really super mad at this guy. He’s about to purge. Hang traitors in Red Square. Right. “No, no!” Bill says, “That just shows Putin’s weak! We have to have all NATO attack (with nukes) today.”

    The level. Of Western. Insanity. Bends my image of the whole universe. Is the Universe even large enough, heavy enough, grand enough, to have this kind of denial and stupidity resting in it? Don’t we really need another universe to hold objects this large?

    ““..Western governments and pundits clearly suffered more embarrassment from this episode than Putin did..”

    No they didn’t. As above, Browder still at it, and every major outlet will run him or the same stories. “Putin winning 5/5 only means he’s weak!” “Walls are Closing In!”

    “• Ukraine In NATO Is ‘Path To Peace’ – FM (RT)

    This was Bill Browder’s line, where every word is a lie. “Russia is an expansion state, who attacks everyone not in NATO!” Uh. Whut? Of our two nations, there is only ONE who attacks like 100 nations and it’s not Russia. WHO exactly has Russia ever attacked? I’ll wait.

    “So therefore the only way to KEEP Russia from attacking is to PUT Ukraine in NATO! Duuu-uh. Everybody knows that!” Well, first thing, Russia never attacked anyone before, and therefore there is zero data set on attack yes/no. But you might also notice the REASON they attacked was to KEEP Ukraine from NATO.

    As that’s true, it will also be true that if you put Ukraine in NATO – ever – at any speed, at any time – THEY WOULD ATTACK NATO. They wouldn’t just say “Oh well, ya got us.” So war is peace for sure. The only way to have peace is to keep having wars with Russia! No. Literally. They say this all the time, about all nations. Just last week CNN said “We have to have war with Russia (there) so we don’t have a war with Russia (there)”. Riiiiiight. War = Peace but War also = War? Sure! When your reality is nothing but AntiLogos, that makes more sense than anything before!

    Kassandra: Yes, evil’s whole M.O. their whole narcissistic lives, depend on only that one thing: that you can’t conceive or credit that they are that evil. Personally, I don’t know why. If you can imagine a little evil, surely you can imagine more, but as has often been quoted “The mind reels” “People are in denial” “tell the Big Lie, the bigger, more brazen, more impossible, more breathtaking, the better”. Ask Phoenix about trusted people telling big lies until finally breaking out of it, I think she knows.

    Not to make you responsible or anything, but it’s YOUR inability to imagine it, and therefore deny it, that allows the evil to BE so large. …Collective “Your”. And I don’t know what to do about it. Is it a good thing to make yourself open up to and believe such horrors? Bring them into your reality and soul? Probably not. Which is what men were created for. We will do this, but you have to trust and let them. Like the movie, THEY will track down the human traffickers and dispatch them. You just don’t ask questions about the specifics of what it looked like or how it was done. It’s enough that THEY will do so, and make the world safe for goodness and love. Which is the world we will be overjoyed to create for you. But you have to let them.

    Sure CitizenX. The gays used to try to pick ME up as a child. And that was years ago. They were proud members of NAMBLA and wanted to make sure I knew it. (Though not all are, of course). They tried to pick up Hemingway in 1910, it’s like other crimes, it’s nothing new. The sex of children is worse than just an infraction, a legal level of ages, worse even than just statutory or even a rape. Child development is like a plant growing, and to sexualize them early – especially in a serious way like intercourse – as if breaks the central stem, cuts off the natural growth. Forever. Although all things can be done, it basically makes an irreversible physical, mental, and psychological damage that can never be repaired. Their love and sexuality is essentially forever broken. Now we may not notice so much since everyone we know already did bad things to themselves too young, and half the kids in school are already sexed up or even trafficked, while the other half watch porn at such an early age that they’re mentally bent and trafficked. So it doesn’t stand out, it’s part of the water of immorality we swim in, unless your closest neighbors are the Amish. But that’s why the “Love of man grows cold” isn’t it? Why mothers can’t give a s—t about their children? Their love is already bent and broken from age 10. And even they don’t know why. All the adults around them, seeing it as “normal” don’t know why. They say suck it up, life sucks. Maybe you’re gay and the new drug, new lover, new click is the love you’re starving for. No. It isn’t. You broke your love, the door collapsed and you can’t reach that now. Dig out, it may take years.

    And we were telling you not to do this thing, go down this road, not to be a nagging Nellie, but because WE LOVE YOU. Don’t do this thing. Don’t cut your parts off, mentally, emotionally, and now physically, or you’ll be a disabled shell hobbling around all your life perhaps. They won’t listen. It ain’t cool! You can’t judge me! Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll! I do what I want! Stupid Sky God!

    Yes, and you take the irreversible consequences of that too.

    Thinking about solar and the wind array, finally something productive to add. Yes, the power is way, WAY too lumpy. Always feast and famine. But I figured out that you need to spec the power output and put in a dump shunt. This is already done not to overload the system, used to power electric (24v) heating elements in the winter. Okay. But you could use the same idea to run something, say a giant icemaker freezer in the summer. It’s not just USING it, which might not be worth the investment, it’s about SAVING the batteries and charge controllers from constant high use or even destruction.

    #138816
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    ‘Zero Amish children diagnosed with cancer, diabetes or autism’

    This is an important point, particularly with regards to autism. It should be possible to correlate vaccine data with autism, possibly even singling out individual vaccines as potentially harmful. Not everyone has had every vaccine.

    Who would fund this? Certainly not Big Pharma or large medical organisations. I can’t see it being done even though it should be straight forward. Even if, say, a wealthy individual would fund it would they be allowed access to the data?

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkTV3HMXwAMOPBJ?format=jpg&name=small

    #138818
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    The level. Of Western. Insanity. Bends my image of the whole universe. Is the Universe even large enough, heavy enough, grand enough, to have this kind of denial and stupidity resting in it? Don’t we really need another universe to hold objects this large?

    I do not have an answer to that last question…
    But what I do know is that in the U.S., they are a very damaged and sick society…
    Everything falls from there…it’s not an encouraging place to begin to find answers…

    #138819
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    UGH!
    I also did not mean to imply that the U.S. is the center of the universe; they most assuredly are not!
    Anyhoo…big trouble ahead……

    #138820
    Red
    Participant

    Key takeaways
    Tokenisation of money and assets has great potential, but initiatives to date have taken place in silos without access to central bank money and the foundation of trust it provides.
    A new type of financial market infrastructure – a unified ledger – could capture the full benefits of tokenisation by combining central bank money, tokenised deposits and tokenised assets on a programmable platform.
    As well as improving existing processes through the seamless integration of transactions, a unified ledger could harness programmability to enable arrangements that are currently not practicable, thereby expanding the universe of possible economic outcomes.
    Multiple ledgers – each with a specific use case – might coexist, interlinked by application programming interfaces to ensure interoperability as well as promote financial inclusion and a level playing field.

    https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2023e3.htm

    #138821
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Musk changed all that by showing the public an extensive network of government interventions to support censorship and blacklisting of private citizens.
    Incorrect – he offered a limited hangout. No one charged. Nothing changed just little bits to make us all feel the tightening of the control grid more like soft velvet.
    I’m unsure how China and Russia are NOT involved given their performance during LOCKSTEP.
    The Bankers and Billionaires have gone direct and as CJ Hopkins likes to say ‘they aint playing grab-ass anymore’
    We free thinkers are as deviant in the west as China or just about anywhere.

    #138822
    oxymoron
    Participant

    @Red

    exactly

    #138823
    Red
    Participant

    The powerful United Nations is now seeking to increase its influence worldwide by seizing global “emergency” powers, and President Joe Biden supports their proposal.

    Interestingly, the U.N. proposal would begin September 2024, a mere two months before a highly anticipated general election in the U.S.

    The global organization will host a “Summit of the Future” where associated nations will adopt a so-called “Pact for the Future.”

    The “pact,” or agreement, would set in place multiple policy reforms offered by the U.N. in past years as part of its “Our Common Agenda” platform.

    While there are several aggressive proposals included in the agenda, none are as disconcerting as the U.N.’s plan for an “emergency platform,” which would provide the international organization significant powers in times of “global shocks,” such as another global pandemic.

    Exposed: UN Set to Launch ‘Global Shocks’ Plan Just Prior to US Presidential Election

    God damn it I have to go for more tinfoil!

    #138824
    Clueless Honky
    Participant

    Clueless Honky has a new post, The Last to Know, about how consumers of mainstream media are always the last to know, and how places like TAE are one of the best ways through that conundrum.

    https://cluelesshonky.substack.com/p/the-last-to-know

    #138825
    Red
    Participant

    UN + IMF + WHO + BIS = AGENDA 2030 as per WEF. All signs seem to point to a similar place, no one reads signs anymore. Most would seem to be lost. Signs ignored, consequences reaped.

    #138826
    zerosum
    Participant

    walk a mile in my shoes
    First, put food on the table, then, if you have surplus energy, you can face truth and reality and adapt your survival options in the social/economic/political environment that surrounds you.
    Are these your shoes?

    1. BRICS+ is a collection of nations that say enough is enough with endless US wars, financial instability and US Govt money printing on the backs of other nations causing inflation around the world. BRICS+ will end the US Govt Ponzi scheme without a war.
    2. • US, Europeans Depleted Their Weapons Stockpile Fighting Russia in Ukraine (Sp.)
    3. • Vaudevillian Visitors in Vilnius (Sp.)
    4. • Prigozhin’s War (Lauria)
    5. • Welcome to Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness” (Turley)
    6. Depopulation – Global Pandemic
    7. Politicians are liars trying to convince you to obey their wishes

    My shoes include inputs from TAE.
    ————

    #138827
    tboc
    Participant

    Dear Doctor of Denial, Succintness has it’s charms, unless you are engaged in propaganda. Then say it, whatever it might be, 365 days in a row with as many words as possible.

    The entire regimen of tax cutting starting with Raygun has a singular purpose, to free up disposable income and direct it to compound interest payments. There is no way taxes could have ever have financed our Global War OF Terror.
    The compound interest on the financing for that self-storage warehouse where we store those useless signs of our affluence we pay compound interest on our credit cards for?
    That closet full of clothes and shoes we never wear that are still being paid for,
    That vacation, that jet ski, that boat, that ATV, that travel trailer, those RVs – simple to luxurious -, that high end automobile your teenager drives so everyone can see our affluence, the debt incurred by the corporation where you have employment, the debt carried by every town, city, county and state?
    Compound interest!
    Starting with our Iran-Contra affair and moving to our debacle in Ukraine,
    every child starved, maimed and murdered along our affluent path has been the victim of compound interest.

    “”Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” and the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me
    Sent me down the hall, said “You’re our boy”. Arlo Guthrie – Alice’s Restaurant – 1997
    or
    Three Cheers for Grover Norquist – “You’re our boy”
    Do you still use Facebook? The platform longest involved in pimping your daughter out for compound interest. “You’re our boy” It’s so convenient!

    And finally – The TRUE people of the Book have no part in this – looking at you CelticBiker. “None so blind as those who WILL not see”

    #138828
    anticlimactic
    Participant

    Cluster munitions : How many will be fired at Russian troops and how many will be fired at civilians in the Donbas and Crimea?

    #138829
    Red
    Participant

    Sri Lanka is colonized again. We are administered by foreigners from the IMF just as we were by the VoC back then. We are sold out by a despised Parliament and a usurper President, just as we were by the Kandyan nobility in 1815. Our new nobility gets to continue stealing and murdering while the comprador classes of Colombo get paid off with imported goods. Just like under colonialism. Then, as now, it is the common people of Sri Lanka who suffer. They are starving.

    Colonialism always worked like this. It was always divide and conquer. Colonialism always worked by taking economic control of a country while letting its petty nobility keep petty privileges. It always worked by letting local merchants take their cut of the blood-letting of the whole nation. And we always administered to it ourselves. The face and even the boot of colonialism was predominantly brown. I used to wonder how we did this to ourselves, but I don’t wonder anymore. In front of my own eyes, among my own people, I see it happening.

    How is what’s happening today colonialism? Compare it to the capitulation of this country to the British in 1815. The Kandyan Convention deposed the legitimate king, vested the country in the British Empire, and preserved only the ranks of the Kandyan nobility. What have we done in our completely hijacked Aragalaya? Deposed an elected President who was replaced with one completely unelected and rejected by the people last election. Preserved the ranks and privileges of a despised and frankly criminal Parliament. And we call this democracy? Where are the local government elections, delayed for years now? At a time of such great crisis, why are the people not consulted in a General Election? This is no democracy. It’s just another wretched nobility, selling us out to the American Empire instead of the British.

    We have a ‘caretaker’ government composed almost exclusively of criminals, led by someone explicitly rejected by the people, collaborating with completely unaccountable foreigners. This is not caretaker government. It’s an undertaker government.
    Why do I blame the Americans instead of ourselves? Follow the money. Look at the currency our misery is denominated in. That’s the problem. We had a forex crisis in dollars, not a problem with rupees or yuan. For us, what sunk us was the dollar, as it is for much of the world. This is happening globally,

    https://indi.ca/sri-lanka-is-colonized-again-again/

    #138830
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Thinking like an executive here and excuse my plagiarism. Also trigger warning – I’m in a rant mood.

    What happens in organisations is effort and cost – think Roman empire, WEF, Gov and a little tech start up for example. The less they have to do to produce results (lock people down, censor or make phones) the better it does its job. The outside of the organisation is the true reality. It is beyond the control of the management. This is why war and Ivermectin are problematic. You can only plan from within an organisation but your plans are directed at the world.
    The world is outside your plans.
    It can feel very comforting from within the business when its going well (Klaus) but the nature of the business must be as absolutely efficient and small as possible to be a perfect organisation because you exhaust your profit and capital and energy the bigger and more inward looking the bis gets (looking at you US GOV).

    This move to colonise genes and look inward is showing the resource and easy returns for empire in decline. It is perhaps why a surplus of humans in poverty is generating easy returns on child trafficking etc.
    The hand will get over played in time because the energy balance doesn’t add up and a lot of the outside world does not respond well to management. I for example say to the WEF – fuck right off and I’ll manage my own family, social interactions and forest without your help.
    In fact I will intentionally maximise efforts to exhaust your energy by being an unwilling customer and will relentlessly post bad reviews of what you are selling on all available platforms including word of mouth.
    I will also seek to publicly judge the character of your various members (Larry Fink, Kill Gates etc) as seriously wanting and entirely villainous and untrustworthy pieces of garbage.
    Unless these Fascist Banking mobsters make special efforts to directly view what is happening on the outside reality they will become obsessed with their wants and their organisation and will run out of customers or willing helpers.
    Or like thalidomide they may go through the ‘oh shit’ phase and crawl under what ever rock they can find before openly murdered.

    #138831
    Red
    Participant

    Balkanizing Russia? If most of what TPTB say is projection than maybe the Balkanizing of Russia really means the USA. Look at the way the country seems to be self dividing. West coast, everything south of the Mason-Dixon line over to and probably including New Mexico, the Northeast over to say the Ohioriver valley and then the central continental plains into the mountains somewhere. Where the hell is that tinfoil?

    #138832
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    To potentially prosecute a parent for refusing to use an adopted pronoun of their child is chilling and wrong. Nevertheless, a CPS spokesperson doubled down with a comment to Fox News that “domestic abuse is a severe crime and leaves victims with a lasting impact . . . This assists prosecutors to ensure that any victim, regardless of who they are, can get justice for the abuse they have faced.”

    Here is the most ridiculous part of this:

    Currently, it is nearly impossible to get CPS or a family court to pay attention to verbal and/or emotional abuse of children by parents. I gave “very important,” family-court-appointed people specific examples of verbal and emotional abuse of my children by their father. They were uninterested. Within a couple weeks of the “graduated parenting time” implemented by the court for my kids to see their father more and more over the course of six months, I saw marked changes in their behavior and demeanor. No one with any real influence over the situation paid any attention to my observations. Now, as teens, my kids sometimes open up and tell me what they were thinking and feeling and experiencing then, and now, at their father’s home. It isn’t pretty. Two of my kids struggle with depression. (Not formally diagnosed — this is their own observation of their own self.) My daughter sometimes harms herself. And all I can do is offer support — I am powerless to change their living arrangements.

    Here’s the fun part: it seems that, generally, family court and CPS are not interested in verbal/emotional abuse because it is (a) difficult to prove and (b) common for disgruntled parents to accuse each erroneously of verbal and emotional abuse. For example: one year after the kids started spending more time with their father, and I noticed these things, he filed legal papers accusing me of neglect as well as verbal/emotional abuse of the children. He lost, because his allegations were unfounded, and conversations with the children proved it. But, he wasn’t asked to pay my legal fees and he was only asked to fund half of the costly custody study.

    So now, suddenly, our society is going to elevate a *special* type of verbal/emotional abuse — misgendering — as somehow more sacrosanct and damaging than any other type of abuse?? They are insane. My daughter has a female friend who wants to use they/he pronouns and for people to alternate between “they” and “he” regularly in conversation. Some people don’t even possess the mental acuity to attempt to do this, let alone succeed. And the girl’s parents? They are great people, salt-of-the-earth types, and the continue to use female pronouns and the girl’s given name.

    #138833
    Red
    Participant

    The cynic in me is gaining greater control all the time. I followed the climate warming talk and warnings as closely as I could from the early eighties on. All the peer reviewed papers and talks by the most respected in their various fields of expertise. So now we are at the point where the rubber meets the road so to speak. Things aren’t even close to what we were told to expect by now. Well the resource wars seem to be here on schedule. So I read this headline:
    “Niger hit by blistering heat wave linked to climate change”
    Tag line:
    “The West African country of Niger is in the grip of a severe heat wave. Scientists say temperatures in Niger are rising one and a half times faster than in the rest of the world. Heat waves in the country are becoming more frequent and intense.”
    I was sure it was the Arctic that was rising multiple times faster or was the Antarctic? Are these places not part of the “rest of the world”? Now it is only “linked” so it’s all just correlation then? No hard evidence? Now the thing that sticks with me is the correlation part. Some of the reasons I now put forth as good reason to have abstained from the experiment are just that, correlation. Then they are thrown back as just that and not proof. Only to be followed up with opposite correlation and or .gov PR to counter my point. I usually point out the paradigm and then crickets.
    Suits me just fine. If I can’t use correlation than such nonsense cannot be put forth by the party claiming it isn’t worth looking into, on that basis.

    Oxy rant on!

    #138834
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Dr D
    . If there’s coal under your peasant’s house, get a solicitor to make something up to chuck them out. When you break all laws and contracts like that, erasing all legal property rights, it’s “Capitalism

    Which is why it is helpful to clearly delineate the differences between economic systems and political systems. Sure, if capitalism is a virtue and is defined as purely following self interest in the economic sphere, it makes sense to use any means, legal or not, to get at the coal. Which is why we need a political system that respects rights of individuals and traditional property laws (which vary greatly from place to place, and age to age,) rather than being primarily beholden only to whomever has the most wealth, popularity, or guns.

    #138835
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Re: BRICS+ will end the US Govt Ponzi scheme without a war.

    Catherine Austin Fitts often had that uncomfortable question in her numerous guest appearances:
    “Who would push the Red Button”
    aka the proverbial mean to make entire US financial structure collapse and clear the way so the next generation has a chance to make something better. Not easy decision since “The Ponzi” is a financial lifeline of just about any aspect of living of the current generation.
    Well….the V-R-L-D– (as H. Kissinger would pronounce it) will do it for us.

    #138836
    Dora
    Participant

    Peak Prosperity

    #138837

    So, pretty soon our secret alien technology will reveal TUNGSTON as the most valuable metal one can own, and luckily the US has tons of it in Ft Knox. Right?

    The knock at the door goes “pound, pound, pound!”
    And you’re offered face value for the gold you’ve got around.
    And you say, “No thank-you, I am keeping it, instead.”
    And the guy at the door says- “Bang! You’re dead”.

    #138838
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Sure, if capitalism is a virtue and is defined as purely following self interest in the economic sphere, it makes sense to use any means, legal or not, to get at the coal.

    At its most bare-bones, Capitalism is: You can’t enslave people or steal from them. To get something from them, offer them something they will WILLINGLY give you the thing you want in exchange

    (If you can only steal or enslave because you are unable to bring value, you’re a useless loser…)

    Government itself is, in that sense, inside Capitalism. If it offers something in exchange for what it takes away, something that is WORTH it, then it is good government. If it doesn’t, it’s a worthless loser government.

    IF you presume Capitalism = Oppression – ie, the opposite of capitalism – then you would presume that stealing resources on a poor person’s land is Capitalism.

    But that would be Marxism, which thrives on inversion of definitions and a fair bit of projection as well. When they WIN, they try to make their new system work, it fails, they persecute evildoers that are ruining their Great Plans, they keep failing, they swiftly throw up their hands and say “Fine. We will steal and enslave – but it’s for a great future in which slavery and theft are eliminated” ….when there were lower levels of theft and slavery before they got control.

    #138839
    zerosum
    Participant

    misgendering
    Is that the same as a nick-name?
    Would a teacher get into trouble for not using the nick-name?

    #138840
    zerosum
    Participant

    Conflict thinking
    Canada/Trudeau approves killing people, if they are Russians.
    Canada/Trudeau does not approve of killing Russians with cluster bombs.
    Canada/Trudeau is not at war with Russia
    Canada is helping Ukraine preserve democracy?

    #138841
    kultsommer
    Participant

    But that would be Marxism, which thrives on inversion of definitions and a fair bit of projection as well. When they WIN, they try to make their new system work, it fails, they persecute evildoers that are ruining their Great Plans

    You are absolutely right jb-hb! in this statement. Probably you are surprised that is coming from kultsommer? On the other hand, “theoretical musings and definition” of the capitalist system you should reserve for some other parallel universe.
    You could know but do not want to:
    In the entire 70-year existence of Soviet Union and later on in other Socialist countries no “heavily indoctrinated” ordinary citizen EVER uttered those words, after day-in-and-day out observation of his bleak existence:
    “You know Volodya, I think that some capitalist contra-revolutionary forces infiltrated OUR beautiful system and ruining the”Great Plan”, so that’s why we are where we are now….” They knew.
    Which happened not to be the case with “non-indoctrinated You-guys”.

    #138842
    kultsommer
    Participant

    In reference to angry comment outbursts as of late. Some comment and insist to convert the opposite side to his or hers opinion as their life depends on it!!!
    Commenting is just an exchange of opinions on the site that posters “welcomes different opinions”. Well…not necessarily but still, calm down guys.

    #138843
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Solzhenitsyn gives a blow by blow of the Soviets jumping continually at shadows. Newly invented terms enabling them to discover newly-defined traitors, saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries.

    ….“theoretical musings and definition” of the capitalist system you should reserve for some other parallel universe…

    like the parallel universe inside the heads of marxist academics? Is this a reminder that I should be staying firmly inside marxist definitions, “study” of captialism, and don’t dare stray out into a parallel universe of observable objective reality and common sense? “The Capitalist System” Really?

    “You know Volodya, I think that some capitalist contra-revolutionary forces infiltrated OUR beautiful system and ruining the”Great Plan”, so that’s why we are where we are now….” They knew.

    Like in the New Economic Plan in 1921, when the Communists realized they were going to fast, causing things to fail, looking like crazy incompetents to the general populace, so they relaxed all their controls, allowed people to trade value for value with less control and coercion?

    Like when China started allowing free enterprise – just some DEGREE of trading value for value – and had a way better outcome than The Great Leap Forward, which was grounded in sensible forward thinking Marxist Materialism?

    It’s just weird that whenever they use Capitalism, they benefit. But also “they knew” the Capitalists were sabotaging them, eh?

    #138844
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Just got back from the liquor store. The entire depth of the fridge area behind the shelves is crammed to capacity with not only Bud but AB/inBev products in general.

    I suspect the 25%-ish estimate for fall in Bud/AB/inBev sales is kinda like the vax statistics. Pick a number large-ish enough to be barely believable but small enough to say “You’re an ISOLATED minority!” I think the reported % figures are part of the attempted damage control.

    Before Solo A Star Wars Story came out and lost money, Disney-Lucasfilm and its various many tentacles and pseudopods and bots kept shrieking full-spectrum/bandwidth that fans dissatisfied with Star Wars were Just A Small Vocal (bigoted) Minority and/or Russian Bots. But then Solo lost money. Because no one asked for a Han Solo movie in which Han wanders around in a daze asking everyone what’s going on while getting beaten up by women while having the stripes on his trousers “explained”

    (which is why someone bought all those empty seats for Captain Marvel – we’re not doing that Solo thing again – in the run-up to Captain Marvel, we were joking to each other, “What are they gonna do, force us to the movie theatre at gunpoint?” well, now we know)

    Buffet just bought one of only 7 US LNG terminals for 3.3 Billion. Weird to think of Star Wars having been bought by Disney for over 5 Billion. But I guess LNG terminals are downstream from culture.

    The Acolyte – the movie to be directed by Harvey Weinstein’s secretary in which a girlboss decides The Force (the energy of Life which surrounds, sustains, and connects us) is Bad and needs to be destroyed To Make It Fair – is apparently in worse trouble than thought. Officially, 300+ Million has already been poured into this “concept” with not much to show for it. Rumor has it that Kathleen Kennedy kept re-directing additional unapproved/unreported millions to the project while cooking the books. Additional rumor has it that her email is coming back Undeliverable, she shows in Outlook as out on PTO, and that Disney execs have a team of people investigating Lucasfilm.

    Biden DOJ Indicts Whistleblower Prepared To Testify Against 1st Family

    What about Clinton Standard Operating Procedure (CSOP) do you not get, Biden? – well, “Biden” Does this whistleblower not do bench presses or have a nail gun? wtf. Is this Spaceballs In The White House or what?

    #138845
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    “Not to make you responsible or anything, but it’s YOUR inability to imagine it, and therefore deny it, that allows the evil to BE so large. …Collective “Your”. And I don’t know what to do about it. Is it a good thing to make yourself open up to and believe such horrors? Bring them into your reality and soul?”

    Yes. It is essential to ACCEPT that evil IS here/there/everywhere. As individuals and as family/community, we have to “go there” – dig it out, face it. To EXPERIENCE the reality/impact (as if it happened/is happening directly to us) so that we see it and know it for what it is.

    It doesn’t matter which form of evil delivers you to your breaking point. It’s important that you get there! And that you experience your own SWORD IN THE STONE/”There’s no place like home”/“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that”/TVASSF/bonus hole + chest feeding/WAR IS PEACE/cluster bombs 4 thee/“We’ll always have Paris” moment(s).

    REJOYCE in your new-found freedom! Stand up. Call it out. Name it. All of it. Good and evil. The power, the force, the LIGHT is you.

    In the process, you strengthen and sharpen the gift of discernment – the ability to recognize truth/good/LOVE from lies/evil/hate. IMAGINING, remembering, and knowing that there is as much capacity/capability for GOOD as for evil. You choose.

    Be good. Be LOVE. In every thought, word, deed.

    You just keep throwing yourself at LOVE with LOVE – until you know that YOU ARE LOVE.

    LOVE to Ilargi and Friends that gather here.

    #138846
    Susmarie108
    Participant

    #138847
    DarkMatter
    Participant

    Who is Bill Browder?

    There is a movie called “The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes” that features Browder. The director, Andrey Nekrasov, claims he was going to make a movie about corruption in the Russian government and how Magnitsky, who was Browder’s accountant, was wrongly imprisoned and then essentially murdered in prison. This was the justification for the Magnitsky act in the US that sanctioned high level Russians. The Magnitsky act was championed by John McCain and others. Nekrasov says in the movie that the more he learned about the incident the less he believed it until he ended up making a movie that was just the opposite. He interviews Browder in the movie. Browder thinks Nekrasov is a friendly and gladly answers questions until it becomes obvious that Browder is now the target at which point he walks out of the interview. The film is convincing but is of course just one side of the story.
    I have a Russian co-worker and when I mentioned Magnitsky he repeated the MSM Putin-government-bad-thankyou-John-McCain line. He hadn’t seen the movie and had zero interest in watching it. I asked if he thought Browder was a good guy but he had never heard of him. I asked about John McCain and he said that though McCain had done some bad things he had also done some good things. He said that Nekrasov used to be a respected director who had called out Putin but had now gone over to the dark side, probably for money. My coworker is very anti-Putin and since he is Russian I have to believe he knows things I don’t.
    I still think Neskarov’s position is more correct but it’s interesting to hear the other side. As with so many things it’s hard to know what the truth of the matter really is.

    #138848
    kultsommer
    Participant

    …..Newly invented terms enabling them to discover newly-defined traitors, saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries.

    Yep. All by communist higher-ups.

    Like in the New Economic Plan in 1921, when the Communists realized they were going to fast, causing things to fail, looking like crazy incompetents…..

    Here comes you that prompted my reply:

    When they WIN, they try to make their new system work, it fails, they persecute evildoers that are ruining their Great Plans

    Rule by FEAR that history proves, you know….Stalin’s horrors. Ever heard of them?

    While I wrote “70 years of Soviet Union” in my post, I was rather thinking about the conversation than never took place sometimes after Stalin’s death, 1953 and on to 90’s, when things “normalized”.

    #138849
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    It should be clear to everyone by now that the present war (Truthful Good vs Indescribably Wackadoodle Evil) is neither pointless nor avoidable, although discussion of the details do seem to be endlessly fascinating. The war is the expression of the very nature of the Universe itself, and it is never going away, unless the Universe goes with it. Whether or not that happens is too far above my pay grade, so not my department, but the nature of the fight is right down my alley.

    The internecine conflict is the dramatic manifestation of free will. Free to be right, and equally free to be wrong, according to one’s self determined choices. Both choices (right/wrong, good/bad, true/false, etc ) have their effects, and those effects are felt and described as either “dire consequences” or “beneficial results” depending upon the orientation of one’s viewpoint. In other words, all causes have effects which simply cannot be prevented once the cause has been executed. Whether you like those effects (or not) is entirely up to you, as are the choices of the actions taken to cause or forestall them.

    I suppose I could be reasonably criticized for reducing life’s complexities down to such rhetorical simplicity, but my defense is that the simplicity of it continues to hold true . . . both generally and in fine detail. . . regardless of how big or how small or how finely ground the details.

    If somebody wants NOT to be mean, nasty, incapacitated, dreadfully unhappy or downright evil then they should try their best to love and serve the BEST interests of others at least as much as they look out for good old Number One. But if, on the other hand, defiant victory for themselves alone (above all others) is what they value above all else, then they are free to give that a go. Free will is nothing if it isn’t free and willful, so let ’em have at it. You can’t easily STOP them anyway (FREE will, and all that, right?) Evil is stupid, doomed, and never ends well (indeed it probably doesn’t end at all) but telling people so doesn’t seem to have very much short-term effect on their stupidity, or destructive behavior. Maybe they’re all from Missouri and need to SHOWN why it’s a bad idea. That can be arranged.

    It also so happens that orientation toward good is in the direction of what we call spirituality or God (for lack of words to say it any better), and the opposite is in the direction of materiality, evil, Satan, or whatever. One path leads to “Heaven” and the other goes to “Hell”, and it doesn’t really matter very much what you call any of those things either. None of us are smart enough to fully comprehend it in either case anyhow.

    But we can all tell the difference.

    #138850
    kultsommer
    Participant

    When you think that things can not get any creepier.
    Do not forget to have a yellow ribbons tied to porch posts.

    https://abc7.com/camp-pendleton-san-diego-county-marine-arrested-missing-teenager-found-at-military-base/13479527/

    #138852
    John Day
    Participant

    Dora: Thank you for the Chris Martenson interview with PAul Marik MD.
    Reduce your cancer risk 60% by taking (enough) vitamin-D, omega-3 supplement (fish oil, butter/cheese from grass-fed cattle) and daily exercise at home, preferably in the sun (but don’t get burned).
    Further benefits from cutting out sweet drinks and refined sugars & starches, eating fresh veggies, avoiding alcohol and tobacco, and drinking green tea.
    Meryl Nass has more of that information here: https://merylnass.substack.com/p/know-anyone-with-cancer-dr-paul-marik

    #138853
    jb-hb
    Participant

    While I wrote “70 years of Soviet Union” in my post, I was rather thinking about the conversation than never took place sometimes after Stalin’s death, 1953 and on to 90’s, when things “normalized”.

    When do we count things as “normalized” in the USSR?

    When Solzhenitsyn’s hunger strike ended?

    When I finally got to meet my relatives in the late 80’s during the Gorbachev administration?

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