Jul 032023
 
 July 3, 2023  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Henri Matisse The Dessert – Harmony in Red 1908

 

As France Rocked by Riots Again, Macron Looks Like ‘Spent Force’ (Sp.)
France To Shut Internet Services To Control Riots (R.)
Macron Asks Ministers to Restore Order in France (Sp.)
A Matryoshka of Psyops: General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere (Pepe Escobar)
Value of Wagner State Contracts Revealed By Russian Media (RT)
CIA Sees Ukraine Crisis As Unique ‘Opportunity’ (RT)
Ukrainian Commander Complains About French Tanks – AFP (RT)
Families Of Fallen Ukrainian Soldiers Demand More Cemeteries (RT)
US Congress May Need To Impeach Supreme Court Judges – AOC (RT)
Ukraine Could Become World’s First Cashless Economy – Official (RT)
Major Revaluation Of Gold & Precious Metals Is Imminent (Von Greyerz)
Nothing Can Stop Currency Crisis & War Crisis – David Morgan (USAW)
Jim Rogers: De-Dollarization Fuelled by Soaring US Debt (Sp.)

 

 

Happy birthday Julian

 

 

 

Caviezel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675534694643904512

 

 

 

 

Tom Renz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675189276995190784

 

 

Grossi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675509498117586945

 

 

Vaccine, anyone?

 

 

Trump gender
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675403134133321728

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He still hasn’t declared a state of emergency.

As France Rocked by Riots Again, Macron Looks Like ‘Spent Force’ (Sp.)

France has already seen five consecutive nights of violence after the shooting of 17-year-old driver of Algerian descent Nahel Merzouk by a police officer. What do the immigrant riots mean for the country and Emmanuel Macron’s presidency? “Immigrant riots are an already old and frequent occurrence in France where a large legal and illegal population of mostly African and Near Eastern origin has not been successfully assimilated and does not regard itself as French,” Come Carpentier de Gourdon, geopolitical analyst and convener of the editorial board of World Affairs, told Sputnik. “The second or third-generation youth is troublesome, frustrated and aggressive as it has internalized grudges against the former colonizers and thinks it has a right to live by its own rules. Its educational level is generally low and work opportunities are few.”

“Drug dealing has become very prevalent in many low-income peripheral neighborhoods and brought much illegal wealth to the ring leaders of the local gangs (…) In one sentence, many of those immigrants belong to broken tribal societies where ethnic and religious solidarity is the main bond and where the values of civility and respect for a ‘foreign’ elected and bureaucratic state structure are largely meaningless.” Nahel Merzouk, the teenager of Algerian descent, was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on June 27. As per the Daily Mail, the passenger who was with Nahel in the car at the time of the shooting, broke his silence on July 1, claiming that one of the police officers threatened the teenager and allegedly told him: “Don’t move or I’ll put a bullet in your head.” The passenger went on to claim that the second officer said: “Shoot him.” The first officer allegedly hit the teenager with the butt of his gun two times. After that Merzouk released the break and was then shot down.

The 38-year-old police officer who killed Merzouk has been put under investigation over charges of voluntary homicide. The policeman’s lawyer disputed claims that the officer had threatened to shoot the teenager in the head before firing. Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) subjected Paris to criticism, as Merzouk’s death became the third fatal shooting by law enforcement officers during traffic stops in France in 2023, and the 21st since 2020, according to the mainstream media. The teenager’s death became a pretext for nationwide protests. On July 1, around 45,000 French policemen were deployed throughout the country. The protests spilled over into Switzerland and Belgium. Over 100 rioters attacked shops and police officers Lausanne, while in Belgium’s capital Brussels, protests kicked off on 30 June and proceeded relatively peacefully.

Commenting on the unfolding havoc in France, leader of the right-wing French Reconquete party, Eric Zemmour, stated: “We are in the early stages of a civil war. This is an ethnic revolt…. The French are witnessing what it means to be the product of mad immigration.” “Police brutality is more of a pretext than a real cause for most rioters, despite real cases of abuse of power and unjustified violence,” said de Gourdon. “Lawbreakers of immigrant origin seek to use their identity to claim virtual immunity. They often refuse to obey police summons on the grounds that they are discriminated against and many threaten and insult the police. They thus put themselves in the situation of being suspects and dangerous and those who are law-abiding among them get painted with the same brush.”

If organized crime and drug-related gangs hijack the protests, it could pose a serious challenge to French national security, warned Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels. “The appearance in the riots of Kalashnikovs is not a good sign,” Raffone told Sputnik. “Many countries in Europe live under enormous economic distress that has left social scarfs and divide lines within the society. This situation is the result of the neoliberal privatization policies enforced by the EU and the governments over the past 30 years. After the terrorist legislation enacted in 2001 and the austerity policies after 2008, the pandemics and the central banks’ rise of interest rates to combat the inflation, the situation is generally steaming up in all European countries. Emulation processes may easily occur if triggered by an accident.”

 

 

GADDAFI (2011): “If instead of a stable government which guarantees security, these bands linked to bin Laden take control, the Africans will move in a mass towards Europe and the Mediterranean will become a sea of chaos.”

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How to get popular.

France To Shut Internet Services To Control Riots (R.)

The French government decided to shut down internet service in certain areas amid riots turned violent to prevent the spread of false information. Police officials quoting France Interior Ministry said the ban on social media is to secure the life and property of the citizens. The French Police said landline and mobile service will be restored. Rioting across France was less intense overnight, the interior ministry said on Sunday, as tens of thousands of police were deployed following the funeral of a teenager of North African descent whose shooting by police has sparked nationwide unrest. The government poured 45,000 police onto the streets to try to keep a lid on a fifth night of unrest after Saturday’s funeral of Nahel, a 17-year-old with Algerian and Moroccan parents, who was shot during a traffic stop on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.


Since then rioters have torched cars and looted stores, but also targeted town halls, police stations and schools – buildings that represent the French state. President Emmanuel Macron postponed a state visit to Germany that was due to have begun on Sunday to handle the worst crisis for his leadership since the “Yellow Vest” protests paralysed much of France in late 2018. He was due to meet his ministers on Sunday evening to review the situation, the presidency said, after the prime minister said on Friday the government’s “crisis unit” had been activated until further notice.

Cheap labor

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What can they do that he cannot?

Macron Asks Ministers to Restore Order in France (Sp.)

French President Emmanuel Macron, during a meeting with ministers on Sunday night, called on them to do everything possible to restore order in France amid ongoing unrest, local TV reported. Macron met with French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and several other ministers at the Elysee Palace on Sunday evening to discuss the situation in the country. A local TV channel cited participants in the meeting who said that Macron had asked the prime minister, the interior minister and the justice minister to continue doing everything possible to restore order in France. Macron also said that the French government must continue supporting law enforcement officers and members of special services who have been mobilized over the past five days.


A source told the channel that Macron was planning to receive more than 220 mayors of the communes affected by the riots at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Friday that more than 45,000 law enforcement officers, including special units, were involved in the fight against riots in France, while over 300 police officers and gendarmes were wounded in the first three days of unrest in the country. France Info reported citing a government source on Saturday that French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne had urged all cabinet ministers to return to Paris and stay there amid ongoing unrest in the country. On Friday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the French government to “seriously address the deep problems of racism and discrimination in law enforcement” after a 17-year-old was killed by police in France.

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“..there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus..”

A Matryoshka of Psyops: General Armageddon Is Not Going Anywhere (Pepe Escobar)

To clear the fog, let’s start with a roundup of the usual “winner” suspects. First one is undoubtedly Belarus. Due to the priceless mediation of Old Man Luka, Minsk is now gifted with the most experienced army in the world: the Wagner musicians, masters of conventional (Libya, Ukraine) and non-conventional (Syria, Central African Republic) war. That is already inflicting the Fear of Hell in NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, Russia props up dissuasion on its western front. Like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn’t have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.

And as an extra bonus Russia creates a 24/7 threat to the whole of Kiev’s northern front. Not bad for a “mutiny”. Way more complex is Russia’s internal dynamics. Putin’s current and subsequent difficult decisions may entail loss of popularity coupled with loss of internal stability -depending on the manner Kremlin-defined strategic victories are presented to Russian public opinion. Whatever 24/7 NATOstan mainstream media spin may come up with, the Kremlin’s official explanation for June 24 boils down to a Prighozin demonstration: he was just trying to shake things up. It’s way more complicated than that. There were strategic gains, of course, and Prighozin seems to have followed a very risky script that in the end favors Moscow. But it’s still too early to tell.

A key sub-plot is how the Dance of the Oligarchs will proceed. Independent Russian media was already expecting some – treasonous – players, including state functionaries, to buy their one-way ticket when the going got tough (or to say they were “ill”, or refuse to answer important calls). The Duma – fed by Bortnikov’s FSB – is already working on a hefty list. The Russian system – and Russian society as well – see people like these as supremely toxic: in fact much more dangerous than the demshiza (a term that mixes “democracy” and “schizophrenia”, applied to globalist neoliberals). On the military front, it gets even more complicated. Putin has charged Defense Minister Shoigu to compile the list of Generals to be promoted after The Longest Day. To put it mildly, for quite a few people, from many different persuasions, Shoigu has become a toxic element in Russian politics.

Wagner – rebranded, and under new management – will continue to serve Russia’s interests via Minsk, including in Africa. Old Man Luka, wily as ever, has already firmly stated there won’t be any provocations against NATO via Wagner. Wagner recruiting bureaus will not be opened in Belarus. Belarussians may join Wagner directly. As it stands, most of Wagner fighters are still in Lugansk. For all practical purposes, from now on the Russian government won’t have anything to do, militarily and financially, with Wagner. Additionally, there are no heavy weapons to be confiscated. Already on Monday, June 26, Wagner had moved their heavy weapons to Belarus. What remains – and had not been moved during The Longest Day – was returned to the Ministry of Defense (MoD).

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$10 billion is real money. Russia’s total defense budget is some $80 billion.

Value of Wagner State Contracts Revealed By Russian Media (RT)

Evgeny Prigozhin’s holding, which includes the Wagner Group, has enjoyed substantial benefits from working for the Russian government, securing contracts worth hundreds of billions of rubles, Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, said on Sunday. Speaking on air during his weekly news program, Kiselyov said that Prigozhin’s Wagner private military company “has received a little more than 858 billion rubles ($9.8 billion) under the contracts it signed with the state.” He added that under other contracts, Prigozhin’s holding Concord, which is also engaged in the catering and media business, had provided services to the tune of 845 billion rubles. “This does not mean that they have earned so much, but it is still indicative of the scale of the business and the scale of ambitions,” Kiselyov noted.

He went on to point out that Prigozhin’s company had a strong media clout, adding that some people might have had the impression that the Wagner Group was the most capable frontline unit Russia had. Stressing that he did not want to “detract from anybody’s merits,”Kiselyov recalled that regular Russian units had been faster in capturing the heavily defended city of Mariupol than Wagner troops were in seizing the Donbass stronghold of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine). His remarks come after Russian President Vladimir Putin noted on Tuesday that the Wagner Group was completely dependent on state support. He claimed that for the last year the Russian authorities had allocated 86 billion rubles to pay wages and provide incentives for Wagner fighters.

At the same time, according to the Russian leader, Prigozhin’s Concord company received 80 billion rubles from the state in a year for supplying food products to the army. Last month, Prigozhin accused the Russian Defense Ministry of staging a deadly missile strike on a Wagner camp, and vowed retaliation. The ministry denied the allegation. His troops proceeded to capture several military installations in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, with some forces driving on towards Moscow. However, Prigozhin stopped his advance as part of a deal mediated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. According to the agreement’s conditions, the Russian government consented to drop a criminal case against the PMC leader, and permit him to relocate to Belarus.

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“..the spy agency was simply “wasting American taxpayers’ dollars” as attempts to divide Russian society from abroad won’t work..”

CIA Sees Ukraine Crisis As Unique ‘Opportunity’ (RT)

America’s top intelligence official has openly cheered the alleged internal discord that he claims is rising in Moscow because of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying the CIA has been given an historic opportunity to recruit spies and undermine President Vladimir Putin’s government. CIA director William Burns claimed on Saturday at a Ditchley Foundation lecture in the UK that “disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression.” “That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste,” he added.

Burns noted that the CIA launched a Telegram channel in May to recruit military officers, government officials and scientists who can provide intelligence on the Russian leadership and economy. “We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we’re very much open for business,” he said. Moscow insisted at the time that the spy agency was simply “wasting American taxpayers’ dollars” as attempts to divide Russian society from abroad won’t work, according to Ambassador Anatoly Antonov. Washington is betting that the Ukraine crisis will stir enough division to help turn potential Russian intelligence sources against President Putin. Burns made his speech one week after private military contractor Evgeny Prigozhin ended his brief rebellion against Russia’s top generals.

The aborted mutiny was far less “bloody” than US officials had expected, according to CNN. Burns has insisted that Washington played no part in the uprising, but argued that Prigozhin’s short-lived revolt was “a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime.” Putin said last week that the Russian people reacted to the crisis by showing unity, spoiling the hopes of foreign enemies that the nation would be “split asunder and drown in a bloody feud.” Putin’s approval rating among Russians was little changed at 81% after the aborted insurrection, even according to the independent pollster Levada Center, which had been listed as a foreign agent in Russia since 2016.

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“This is what liberty, equality and brotherhood look like.”

Ukrainian Commander Complains About French Tanks – AFP (RT)

A Ukrainian military commander has reportedly raised concerns that light combat tanks supplied to the former Soviet republic by France aren’t suitable for attacks against Russian defensive lines because their thin armor can easily be pierced by artillery shells and other weapons. Touted earlier this year by Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov as a “sniper rifle on fast wheels,” the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle has proven “impractical” during Kiev’s current counteroffensive against Russian forces, Agence-France Presse (AFP) reported on Sunday. One four-man crew has died because of the tank’s thin armor, which can easily be pierced by Russian weaponry, a Ukrainian battalion commander told the media outlet. “Unfortunately, there was one case when the crew died in the vehicle,”said the 34-year-old Ukrainian major, whom AFP identified only by his call sign, Spartanets.

“There was artillery shelling, and a shell exploded near the vehicle. The fragments pierced the armor, and the ammunition set detonated.” Reznikov was filmed in April riding in an AMX-10 RC, which was among the Western weaponry rushed to Kiev this spring for a long-awaited counteroffensive that finally began in June. “These fast, modern machines with powerful guns will aid us in liberating our territory,” Reznikov said in a Twitter post thanking French President Emmanuel Macron and Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu. “This is what liberty, equality and brotherhood look like.” However, Spartanets said the French tanks have proven to be ineffective in front-line assaults. “The guns are good, the observation devices are good, but unfortunately, there is thin armor, and it is impractical to use them in the front line,” he said. Just sending out the vehicles so they get destroyed, I consider it is impractical and unnecessary because it’s primarily a risk for the crew.”

The Ukrainian commander added that the AMX-10 RCs also has been plagued by breakdowns in their gear boxes, possibly because of their use on dirt roads. Kiev’s troops received one month of training in France, which wasn’t adequate to master operating the vehicle, he said. The 20-ton AMX-10 RC travels on wheels, rather than tracks. It was developed in the 1970s for armed reconnaissance and attacks on tanks. The French military is in the process of replacing its fleet of AMX-10 RCs with the more modern EBRC Jaguar. Thousands of Ukrainian troops have been killed in the counteroffensive, which has failed to breach Russia’s defensive lines. Dozens of Western-supplied armored vehicles have been destroyed, including German-made Leopard tanks and AMX-10 RCs, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The New York Times reported last week that 17 of the 113 Bradley fighting vehicles supplied to Kiev by the US have been damaged or destroyed.

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“..management of the site had decided to exhume unmarked graves from World War I, as it ran out of space..”

Families Of Fallen Ukrainian Soldiers Demand More Cemeteries (RT)

A small-scale protest, staged by families of fallen Ukrainian soldiers, including members of the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment, was held in the heart of Kiev on Friday. The protesters gathered in the Independence Square (the Maidan), urging Ukraine’s authorities to build a national military cemetery. The protesters carried portraits of their fallen relatives, as well as displayed several banners. One of them read “Government, where’s the Ukrainian Arlington?” while another said “Military cemetery cannot wait.” One large banner also stated “National military cemetery must emerge in Bykovnya in 2023,” referring to promises to create such a site in the aforementioned Kiev suburb, previously voiced by top Ukrainian officials.

“The construction of the national military cemetery, promised by the authorities this year, has not even started. The authorities must hear us and understand that the cemetery for the soldiers who died in this war cannot wait,” one of the event’s organizers, the head of civic group ‘Heart Out,’ Vera Litvinenko, said during the rally, as quoted by local media. Litvinenko’s son was killed during the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has been raging on since February 2022. Lack of space to bury fallen soldiers has apparently been an issue for Ukraine for some time already. Multiple videos circulating online show rows of fresh graves emerging at the burial sites all across the country.

In some locations, authorities have to exhume old graves to make room for the newly deceased, the New York Times reported last month. For instance, a groundskeeper at one of the cemeteries told the newspaper that the management of the site had decided to exhume unmarked graves from World War I, as it ran out of space.Both Ukraine and Russia have been tight-lipped on their frontline casualties, each claiming that their opponent has sustained significantly more than they report. Moscow has repeatedly accused the collective West of pushing Kiev into waging war “to the last Ukrainian,” warning that the continuous flow of military aid to the country is only bound to increase the cost of war for Ukrainians.

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“..abusing its power with “authoritarian” rulings..” Nuff said.

US Congress May Need To Impeach Supreme Court Judges – AOC (RT)

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has accused the Supreme Court of abusing its power with “authoritarian” rulings on such issues as abortion, LGBTQ protections, and race-based college admissions, arguing that lawmakers should consider impeaching justices for breaking laws. She told CNN on Sunday that if Chief Justice John Roberts does not voluntarily testify in a congressional probe of alleged ethics violations by Supreme Court judges, lawmakers should consider issuing subpoenas to demand answers. The New York Democrat also called for imposing more stringent ethics guidelines to help maintain a proper balance of power among the nation’s three branches of government. “There also must be impeachment on the table,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach, and abuse of power.”

The congresswoman made her comments after a string of rulings last week in which the nation’s high court struck down President Joe Biden’s plan to wipe out $400 billion in student loan debt, blocked colleges from admitting students based on skin color, and upheld the free-speech rights of a Christian graphic artist who refused to offer her services for same-sex weddings. She also cited last year’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, a landmark 1973 ruling that had protected abortion as a constitutional right. “The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court, which is what we are seeing now,”Ocasio-Cortez said.

For instance, the court’s ruling on refusing services for same-sex weddings stripped away “the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people,” she said. “These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court.” Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the far-left “Squad” group of Democrat representatives have called for expanding the court to 15 justices, arguing that “democracy is in crisis” because six of the nine current judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Biden, who would get to appoint six left-leaning justices in such a scenario, said on Thursday that expanding the court would harmfully politicize the judicial branch.

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That doesn’t seem to rhyme with corruption. How are you going to pay the 10% to the Big Guy?

Ukraine Could Become World’s First Cashless Economy – Official (RT)

Ukraine is considering imposing a complete ban on the circulation of cash in the country in a bid to stamp out corruption, the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office, Rostyslav Shurma, revealed on Wednesday. Speaking at the London Ukraine Recovery Conference, he said his government will present a roadmap on “whether we will do it or not.” The politician expressed hope that “the decision will be ‘yes’,” adding that such a measure would help prevent bribery. “These are very deep and serious discussions within our team, the prime minister and the president. We want to become the first totally cashless economy,”Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine quoted Shurma as saying. The initiative could become a “very effective instrument for liquidation of 95-99% of all corruption cases”in Ukraine, according to the official.


Economists, however, have expressed doubts over the scheme. Ukrainian financial analyst Aleksey Kushch noted that a ban on legal tender would prompt a flow of the hryvna into dollars, triggering a collapse of the national currency. Moreover, he pointed out that hard cash becomes the only means of payment during power outages. In Ukraine “people have been paying bribes through offshore companies for a long time, so cash has no effect on corruption,” the head of the Ukrainian Analytical Center, Alexander Okhrimenko, argued. He claimed that Shurma was engaging in “meaningless publicity and just said something stupid.” According to the analyst, around 40% of settlements in Ukraine are currently conducted in cash.

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“I have never seen a more obvious situation during my soon 60 years in investment markets. ”

Major Revaluation Of Gold & Precious Metals Is Imminent (Von Greyerz)

We have been in the physical precious metals market for almost 25 years for wealth preservation purposes. During that time gold has gone up 6-12 times in most Western currencies and silver slightly less. As the premier company for bigger wealth preservation investors in physical gold and silver, outside the financial system, we have had a very exciting journey so far. But looking at the last 23 years I am very clear that in spite of greater returns in physical gold than most investment classes and much lower risk, the real moves haven’t even started yet. I have never seen a more obvious situation during my soon 60 years in investment markets.

Although some of the precious metals mining stocks will vastly outperform physical gold and silver, we will stick to what we know best in order to serve our esteemed clients as well as future wealth preservation investors. In coming years, most investors will lose a major part of their investments and net worth as they hold on to their conventional investments. For a quarter of a century I have been standing on a soap box, imploring investors to protect their wealth. During that time we have seen The Nasdaq lose 80% in the early 2000s and the financial system being a few minutes from implosion in 2008. But with the help of finger-snapping $10s of trillions into existence, most markets have remained strong. Still, the (almost) Everything Collapse is hanging over us and this time finger-snapping money into existence is unlikely to help.

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“..you cannot go from one fiat phony currency, lie-based system into another one that is digital only.”

Nothing Can Stop Currency Crisis & War Crisis – David Morgan (USAW)

Economic analyst and financial writer David Morgan went against the majority of financial gurus and predicted at the end of 2022 that there was no way the Fed was going to cut interest rates. He said on USAWatchdiog.com in December, “Cut Interest Rates & Dollar is Done, Toast, It’s Over.” Fed Head Jay Powell said this past week the Fed was raising interest rates at least two more times to “fight inflation.” This was a direct hit by Morgan. Morgan sees a coming currency crisis and a war crisis. Morgan explains, “Yes, we have both a currency crisis and a war crisis. Let’s start with the currency crisis. My favorite phrase for what is going on is ‘All fiat currency fails.’

We have never seen a time in all of recorded history that an unbacked currency does not go basically and effectively to zero. When you say that ‘All fiat fails,’ there is a subgroup that says, yeah, but not the U.S. dollar. . . .I don’t know how many people have given me pushback on that statement from all over the world. . . . When I say fail, I don’t mean it goes to absolute zero. What it means is a currency fails and a new system is implemented. . . . History is on my side. . . . The precursor to this is what takes place. Substitution. What is substitution? Crypto currency and gold and silver, of course. . . . and things like people going off grid. All of these are indicators of how to mitigate the end of the U.S. dollar or the end of the currency crisis. We have this all over the place. . . . Sooner or later, there will be a run for the exits. Where are the exits? Crypto currencies, gold and silver, barter clubs or the BRICS currency.”

Morgan contends you just cannot run into an alternative to the U.S. dollar because there are going to be supply disruptions for everything. You might not be able to get what you need no matter how much money you have. So, be prepared in every way you can. Morgan also says, “The Great Reset is what the bankers want, but the Great Reject . . . will come from many who will not want to go down that way. That’s what is going to be the most interesting because anyone who is awake, and there are more people waking up all the time, they will understand that you cannot go from one fiat phony currency, lie-based system into another one that is digital only.”

On the war crisis, the dark powers running the world want war. Why? Morgan says, “It covers up all the things that are wrong, and it also takes them off the hook. It was the war. The war did it. All wars are bankers’ wars, and they are on both sides. They make money regardless. . . . The main things are profit, but it also is mitigating their responsibilities. They can get most people to think that it was the war that caused all this poverty, and, of course, the war will do that. . . . They don’t have a real conflict with Ukraine and Russia. They just need a way out, and it is the most profitable way out. They are going to default on all this debt, and this is how they are going to do it.”

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“This is not a good time to be a young American. I’m an old American. It’s a good time to be an old American because I don’t have to pay the debt. But my kids are going to have to pay the debt..”

Jim Rogers: De-Dollarization Fuelled by Soaring US Debt (Sp.)

The US president declared on Wednesday in a Chicago speech that “Bidenomics is working.” Per Joe Biden, his economic policies have prevented the nation from sliding into recession, driven the strongest recovery among the developed economies, and managed to tame inflation. Nonetheless, just 34% of Americans believe that the country’s economy is in good shape, according to NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. One needs to be cautious when listening to politicians taking credit for taming inflation and saving the day, according to Jim Rogers, a legendary American investor. “I would concur that the worst is yet to come,” Rogers told Sputnik. “It always comes later after normal fluctuations and corrections. I do not agree with the White House that everything is okay now, and I certainly don’t agree that they should take credit for it. To look back at previous inflation anywhere in the world, you will see it goes up, down, up, down. This is the way markets work.”

The crux of the matter is that the US is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world, said the investor. Indeed, the US national debt has reached over $32.3 trillion, or $96,702 for every single person in the country. “Every nation in history that has gotten into that kind of situation has wound up having problems,” Rogers explained. “We have printed a lot of money, we have borrowed and spent a lot of money, which is wonderful for the short term, but eventually we have to pay the price. Inflation is going to get worse. The debt problems are going to get worse, and the US is going to suffer. This is not a good time to be a young American. I’m an old American. It’s a good time to be an old American because I don’t have to pay the debt. But my kids are going to have to pay the debt and they will have a lot of problems.”

Even though DC policymakers are insisting that the US economy is too big and too important to default, and so technologically advanced that it could keep growing despite soaring debt, the reality could be harsher than they dare imagine, as per the investor. To illustrate his point, Rogers referred to the 1980s, when inflation was similarly bad. Then Federal Reserve Chair Paul A. Volcker resorted to sharp interest rate hikes that exceeded 19% by January 1981. It worked at the time. However, in 1983, the United States was still a creditor nation, Rogers pointed out. “The inflation now is worse,” the investor said. “Now the United States is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. So, sure, things are okay at the moment, but ‘at the moment’ is not going to last forever. Somebody has got to pay this debt. Somebody has to print more money. Somebody has to borrow more money. And when you borrow huge amounts of money, interest rates will go higher and higher, inflation will go higher because so much money has been printed.”

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In 1878, Isabella Bover, a renowned French model, was carefully selected to embody the spirit of the Statue of Liberty. This iconic statue, a gift from the generous people of France to their American counterparts, was intended to symbolize the enduring friendship and commemorate the momentous occasion of America’s centenary in 1876. Isabella Bover’s captivating presence became the face that would forever grace this monumental masterpiece, representing the shared values of liberty and freedom cherished by both nations.

 

 

Humpback

 

 

Leopard sleep

 

 

Great white
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675533770340855808

 

 

Swans

 

 


Canada is so big, it’s easternmost city (St. John’s) is closer to Venice, Italy (4833km) than it is Vancouver (5004km). Source:

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle July 3 2023

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    Henri Matisse The Dessert – Harmony in Red 1908   • As France Rocked by Riots Again, Macron Looks Like ‘Spent Force’ (Sp.) • France To Shut Inter
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 3 2023]

    #138278
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Thank you citizenx for the last comment yesterday:
    No beliefs necessary to experience “what is”

    I feel less words and thoughts
    help to experience what is.

    Also suitable actions, words, and thoughts may help to
    transform what is to what you want.

    #138279
    Germ
    Participant

    In a few years, we’ll be looking around at who’s left!

    Young dad dies suddenly after visiting the pub for an hour

    https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/young-dad-dies-suddenly-after-8569621

    TVASSF

    #138281
    Dimitri
    Participant

    By now Escobar has lost all credibility. To repost his preposterous blah blah is an exercise in futility.

    #138282
    Red
    Participant

    “Ukraine is considering imposing a complete ban on the circulation of cash in the country in a bid to stamp out corruption,”

    Or, it is out of cash and is technically bankrupt.

    #138283
    Red
    Participant

    I believe those leopards are actually cheetahs.

    #138284
    Red
    Participant

    Brian @ the new atlas:

    #138285
    Red
    Participant

    Shite still can’t get that damn rumble to fit. Apologies.

    #138286
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Poland Sends Hundreds Of Counterterrorism Police To Belarus Border On Wagner Fears”

    Whut and whut? Terrorism? Words have meanings. And Poland has a whole army of them? Because Poland is the hotbed, the world’s foremost target for terrorist attacks? And they are “police”, with like a .38 revolver and a stick, not like a soldier at all? So when the “border” is in jeopardy from direct invasion, you know who we call? The local Constable O’Malley.

    Words have meanings.
    Words have meanings.
    Words have meanings.

    If you can’t use words straight, you can’t think straight. On purpose. How are they going to get you to kill yourself? By saying “I’ve got an idea, why don’t you shoot yourself in the head”? No. They have to tell LIES that engineer you to do what is innately AGAINST your life and best interest, but is for THEIR life, wealth, and self interest. And borrow your daughters.

    “Israel Buys 25 More Lockheed F-35 Stealth Jets In $3 Billion Deal”

    Well that’s good: they’ll be helpless. Unfortunately they aren’t grounded for a light rain too often in that part of the world.

    “Organ harvesting of children”

    Not that I can’t believe it, but how? Organs are not in oversupply. They would also have to get to a surgeon inside the present system. So who is using the organs and for what?

    For fun, this is what got “Daredevil” and “The Defenders” canceled in 60 seconds. Go see the last episodes with tunnels and kids drugged up in cages. It could only be a metaphor, but if so, metaphor of what? I don’t understand. The allegations are everywhere, but I don’t see practical evidence, process, or motivation.

    “This Whole [COVID] Thing Is Tied in With the DOD, and No One Has the Courage to Talk About It”

    I talked about it from very early on. So have a lot of other people. It’s an enhancement of “Nobody knewd” on the same thing, the tech crash and the housing bubble. Nobody saw it coming or said anything except 500,000 bloggers, every day, online. Point being: what will it take? WE know, but there is a subset that ONLY makes reality out of popularity. Apparently they are constructed differently and nothing we do matters. Our response? Not sure. Pop their bubble I guess, which is painful and may require their kids dying and their fortunes being lost. Oh well; such is war.

    “Anchor: “Russian troops have moved vehicles charged with explosives into the plant, they’ve mined the cooling pond. You have a team on the ground, is this what they’re witnessing?”

    Reporter makes this as a direct statement of fact. Every possible lie. Every innuendo. Every avenue to kill more humans and end more life. Their hatred knows no bounds. Hatred? Someone like this is a self-seeker, a careerist, doing this to keep a cushy rich job. They don’t hate: they’re greedy, they self-love at all costs. Yes. But the hatred is the same root as the Climate Change one: all humans are bad. They must all be killed. I am driven to madness with the (false) belief that I am a human and therefore also evil. As I am evil by birth, by existence, I can only join evil. I can only buy products like drugs and houses, cheap sex, to distract me from how evil and self-hateful I am. So, to survive mentally, emotionally, I do that.

    Thus their whole orientation turns to being #AntiLife, and therefore #AntiTruth. It follows wherever they go, coloring every perception and expression. …So. Beautiful. The Father of Lies cries a little bit to see it, every time. Beautiful Bombs.

    1960 / 2023

    Since we can presume people don’t WANT to be that way, given an easy choice, what happened? Almost like, being #AntiLife and #AntiHuman, all people are evil, therefore we poisoned their food supply from coast to coast, every product, for 50 years, to kill more and slow down their viral, exponential growth. Thereby #SaveThePlanet?

    No? I can show you 100,000 examples. Crack the book on “food additives”. All of them. HFCS, BPA, PVC, Food coloring, aspertime, GMOs, roundup, atrazine, soy and 999,9991 others. What’s amazing and frustrating is how HARD it is to kill people. Life springs eternal and goes around everything. Like their totally failed virus they then had to back-fill with a vaccine. 10,000U of Vitamin D and nothin’. Immune.

    “The second or third-generation youth is troublesome, frustrated and aggressive as it has internalized grudges against the former colonizers”

    THIRD generation? Third? How are they not Frenchmen? The only people dumber than that are Americans where it was 160 years ago, or almost 10 generations. …But someday we will have Black and Female Supreme Court Justices and they can stop complaining about the Patriarchal White Supremacist Colonial court. Oh. Wait. Katanji said that YESTERDAY. And SHE is a Judge. Only one solution Biden and Harvard say: we must all ignore the Courts. You remember them saying that right? All the 50 years of Roe v Wade? Yes, all States and people must ignore R v Wade, they said, the Supreme Court deserves no legitimacy, they said, I remember it clearly.

    “GADDAFI (2011):”

    France was instrumental in causing the destruction and happy-happy slave markets being re-founded in Libya, so here’s payback. You notice she’s a b—-h. I don’t know where it’s going, but France is not my specialty. I suspect very few people have a sound sense of where France goes now. History says they keep doing this for quite a long time, tapering off over 10 years or so, like Algiers, or the Revolution. It will come to order. France is a nice, hard-working place, but she has a habit of this periodically, which is deadly.

    “• France To Shut Internet Services To Control Riots (R.)

    To stop news getting out to the rest of the world? Shutting it down will demonstrate it’s all real and gravely serious better than anything else they can do. In ADDITION to pissing everyone off, AND making them take preparation measures.

    “NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons.”

    Huh. History moves slow, but we reached the high-water mark on NATO and now we have a 50 year NATO contraction as the Russia-sphere expands west? Actually, I would guess so, but that doesn’t have to be militarily and probably isn’t.

    If nothing else, Russia has all the oil. For 100 years. They set the tune. Their constantly having a little more money to spend buys influence and focus.

    “Prighozin seems to have followed a very risky script that in the end favors Moscow.”

    MacGregor said, you don’t understand: Russians LIKE this sort of thing. They LIKE a rude, crass, strong, manly Prighozin. You don’t be a man in Russia without DO-ING something. If you FEEL, you have to ACT. So we, being toddlers, victims, and children, see it all from a view of fear. If our government wrangled. We’re trained to be afraid of everything, always, never react, prepare, or respond. Russia isn’t the West. They see it as wonderful drama, singing patriotic songs in the streets of Rostov, bringing the nation together. Putin is like this, Prighozin is like that. They are actors, characters in Dostoevsky playing their parts as they should. Even if it WERE a real mutiny, as I’ve seen some, many, Russian commentators say (which I disagree) that’s not a problem in a way that’s very difficult to explain to outsiders.

    “The aborted mutiny was far less “bloody” than US officials had expected,”

    You mean like so close to zero it almost can’t be counted? Wagner-meets-Army base defense in Rostov and zero armed people shoot other armed people? Only the few pilots you set up as a side-project were killed? 350,000 soldiers, armed to the tits, meet each other and have fewer deaths than a day of training accidents. Yes, replace with “Zero.” The violent Glue-sniffers cannot understand this because that’s not what THEY would do, just as they can’t understand rural Americans with 10 guns apiece not revolting yet. Newsflash: they’re not violent, self-serving, pinheads. YOU are. They are humans, which means they have love and spirit and forbearance. YOU do not.

    “sniper rifle on fast wheels,” the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle”

    They are all “experts” and spreadsheet jockeys. Sounds like a great vehicle and weapon but only for a different purpose. To Nuland, Blinken, and the Glue-sniffers like “Jungle Joe” Borrell, a tank is a tank is a tank. Repaired, unrepaired, with supporting ammunition or no: all the same. Same with the soldiers. Since humans are irrelevant, hateful vermin, any smelly warm body is the same as any other. 20-year fire training of Azov zealots is the same as a 16 year old Disco clubber, same as a mutinous French immigrant. All the same. Uniform, and Poof!(ter), instant soldier! All the same on the spreadsheet.

    Competency gap, as JB would say. They already murdered all competency and experience coast to coast, THEN murdered all competency worldwide by killing every mercenary. Ukraine has now lost the THIRD army NATO bought for them, and going for a fourth as they position to conscript immigrants. Hurry! Act today! Now with NO guns, NO tanks, and NO artillery! Operators standing by!

    Russia produces more shells per year than ALL OF THE WEST COMBINED, and that’s AFTER the West’s expansion, which hasn’t actually happened yet since they’re incapable of doing or making anything. They can, but they’d have to talk to the Deplorables – MEN, who WORK – and cut out the graft and Socialist red tape, and they are incapable of either. Thank God, or they WOULD be dangerous. They’re Losing losers who lose.

    “• US Congress May Need To Impeach Supreme Court Judges – AOC (RT)

    Okay, great! ...On what charge? Like adding 20 more Justices, why wouldn’t the other side immediately do the same?

    AOC: “Because I wanna win! Everything you do is illegal, and everything I do is good and right. Everything I think in my mind is as pure and right as God himself. I AM God.” That’s the New Age, Modern thing. Man is God. Uh-huh. Sure, honey, sure.

    “That doesn’t seem to rhyme with corruption. How are you going to pay the 10% to the Big Guy?”

    It’s astonishing how dumb they are. Like promoting interracial marriage and children for 40 years then trying to start a race war as part of their 100-year Master Plan. Who are these now-entirely-integrated American families going to shoot? Themselves? You see this everywhere. Like “We’re going to fight a war, that’s why we need to destroy all our railroads, factories, and energy sources.” Okay, man. You do you. We’re going to have limitless corruption but also perfect, limitless, inescapable TRACKING of all OUR corruption. Right.

    ““I have never seen a more obvious situation during my soon 60 years in investment markets. ”

    Except for the last 30 years, where he/they all said exactly the same thing, every day, and their clients died of old age with prices never rising. He’s not wrong, but it depends on human denial of reality, which is clearly infinite.

    Both Rogers, Morgan, and Von Greyerz will matter as Powell hit M2 harder than any time in 150 years. Ever see “Force 10 from Navarone”? That’s why Powell can sit, he can be pretty sure that blew the dam. https://youtu.be/TaB_VccSBFU?t=201 There’s a 6-month lag no one can do anything about. “Nothing! All this work and Nothing!!!” https://youtu.be/TaB_VccSBFU?t=341Oh, it’ll go. Be patient.”

    Problem is, I’m fresh out of patience. Sick of the whole thing.

    #138287
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Germ – you will love Walter Chestnuts latest then. It is a big cancer fest.
    I’m of the opinion that everything gives you cancer and that life is suffering but hey maybe that’s coz I’m a downer.
    Peace to the homies

    #138288
    Dora
    Participant

    Tom Renz on Vigilant Fox. Same tweet posted to Vigilant Fox’s Rumble account

    #138289
    John Day
    Participant

    Coming Unglued https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/coming-unglued

    I may try to say too much again, but it is basically an update of the same thing, which is that the turmoil in our world is reflecting a decline in the resources which support our life support system, which we call “economy”. Our globalized economy is based on energy, cheap energy, as the core resource which allows food to be grown with tractors, harvesters, irrigation, fertilizers and pesticides, which can really grow a whole lot of food, while optimum conditions persist, and nothing runs out.
    Henry Kissinger, in the Nixon years, set American agricultural policy to outproduce and undersell the other farmers in the world, to make the world rely on American farming to survvive. Likewise, the American gold ran out, but the dollar was ingeniously supportd by King Faisal’s oil, which one could only buy with dollars. The US military stepped in later to “support” the dollar by destroying countries like Iraq and Libya which were either selling oil for not-dollars, or taking other steps to unseat the dollar, like making a gold-based African Dinar.
    This $US global hegemony has run out of steam, and it will cease to be the only-game-in-town soon. That is already being eroded, and this is likely to be the summer that a lot of movement in that direction becomes apparent to everybody, for multiple reasons, and as a rapid decline of the military and financial system.

    Gail Tverberg sees what I see, that global oil production peaked in 2018, is declining, andd this shocks the global economy, which is predicated upon growth. It is malfunctioning in a lot of ways. She sees this as being the beginning of a rapid and terminal decline, which is what happens to human economies when they exhaust their fundamental resources. Thanks Red.
    The World Economy Is Becoming Unglued; Models Miss Real-World Behavior
    ​ ​Today’s fossil fuel-based world economy started growing at varying times, in various places around the world, becoming well established by the early 1800s. It seems to have hit a Stagflation Period between 1970 and 1980. Recent patterns in oil supply per capita, interest rates, and debt levels suggest to me that the world economy has entered the Crisis Period of the current cycle.
    ​ ​To me, oil supply, particularly crude oil supply, is exceptionally important in keeping the economy growing because it is heavily used in producing the food supply and transporting it to market. In fact, it is heavily used in transportation of all kinds. We can see what is going wrong by looking at the trend in crude oil per capita (blue line on Figure 2).

    On Figure 2, a line is drawn at 2005, when many people believe that peak “conventional” oil was reached. The line at 2009 points out the long-term slide in oil consumption per capita between 2005 and 2009, related at least in part to the Great Recession of 2008-2009. There was another steep drop in crude oil per capita in 2020, and this drop has not been made up. Cutbacks in drilling and low oil prices suggest that per capita consumption may never recover to the 2018 level.

    The World Economy Is Becoming Unglued; Models Miss Real-World Behavior

    ​ Simplicus looks at the Ukraine War as the NATO summit of July 11 – 12 approaches and Ukraine has no battlefield victories to announce (yet)​
    ​ ​Well, there’s been a bit of a lull like a post-manic-high comedown after the events of Prigozhin’s Revolt. Partly, it’s owed to what Western press is claiming to be bad weather on the frontlines this week, which has hampered further Ukrainian attempts to make renewed advances. They’ve made them in spurts which have been mostly rebuffed with large losses, as usual…
    ​..​Right now, the stage we’re at is the dawning of the harsh realities on Western publics and their administrators. They have already begun to see the futility of Ukraine’s attempt to win back territory and likewise, they see the growing threat of a major nuclear catastrophe…
    ..But recall, there are two opposing camps in the West—the hardliners and the ‘sane’ crowd. The hardliners will continue pushing for escalation because their masters at the top of the elite pyramid will never allow Russia to secure any type of decisive victory, no matter how many people die, because for them it is existential. With Russia’s victory will come the eventual collapse of the entire Western order, which means the hundreds of years old banking cabal that has ruled the globe with an iron fist. Those ancient families at the top cannot allow Russia to win…
    ..Unfortunately, for now, the hardliners, at least within Ukraine, are still pushing for total escalation. The Zaporozhye nuclear falseflag scenario is still rolling along, stronger than ever with a spate of new developments.
    https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-63023-winds-gather-before

    ​One of the “sane crowd”, mentioned above: ​Ex-US Presidential Candidate Gabbard Slams Biden for Nuclear Warmongering
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20230702/ex-us-presidential-candidate-gabbard-slams-biden-for-nuclear-warmongering-1111612677.html

    #138290
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ ​T​he IMF accepted Argentina’s payment in non-dollars.
    ​Argentina made a loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund worth the equivalent of $2.7 billion “without using dollars” on Friday, using Chinese yuan and special-drawing rights notes (the IMF reserve asset based on a basket of five currencies – the yuan, the euro, the dollar, the yen, and the pound) instead.
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20230701/dedollarization-accelerates-as-argentina-makes-imf-payment-using-yuan-1111605999.html

    Geopolitical Evolution: Russia’s ‘Rebellion’ & A Return To Gold-Backed Currency
    The increasing number of nations seeking to join BRICS brings geopolitics into the spotlight. At the time of writing, existing members, those who have applied to join and those expressing an interest total 36 nations, with over 60% of the world’s population and one-third of global GDP.
    Plans for a new trade currency backed by gold appear to be on the agenda for the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg in August…
    .Before we were distracted by the Wagner episode, there were putative signs that the US deep state was changing its view from the conflict being easily winnable with covert support and Putin vulnerable to being toppled. And therefore, the true objective, the dismemberment of Russia, is no more than a dream and the proxy war is becoming a long drawn out operation. There is now little doubt that as a front man Zelensky is unable to deliver the goods, and his supporters in the western alliance are faced with being committed to the long haul.
    The stakes for America are extremely high. Increasingly, neutral countries around the world are shifting their foreign policies on the evidence that America and her dollar are losing their hegemonic power. If America and NATO fail in Ukraine, it won’t just be thirty nations lining up to join BRICS: it will be the moment America’s political grip on the world is certainly lost. And then President Biden can kiss goodbye to his re-election chances next year.
    Equally, Putin will strive to make sure his counteroffensive succeeds, and that must be the short-term priority. The financial benefits for Russia, principally the consequences for energy and oil prices will flow from it.
    Russia is unlikely to immediately adopt a gold standard for the rouble when Ukraine falls because of the geopolitical consequences, not least for its partnership with China. It would undoubtedly hasten the fiat dollar’s destruction as a reserve currency, making financing of the US trade and budget deficits virtually impossible at current interest rates. While these outcomes would undoubtedly be helpful to Putin, it would amount to a major escalation of the financial war between Russia and the western alliance with unpredictable consequences. And it would be a change from Putin’s proven strategy of letting the western alliance make all the strategic errors without his intervention.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/geopolitical-evolution-russias-rebellion-return-gold-backed-currency

    ​ Former US Marine Scott Ritter’s take on the Wagner episode is excerpted here:
    ​ When the events of June 23-24 unfolded before me, I was taken aback. An organization that I held in the highest esteem was engaged in an act of self-destruction before my very eyes, engaged in conduct—an armed insurrection against a constitutionally-mandated government—that any military professional imbued with a respect for the chain of command and the nation he or she served would find reprehensible. Like many others, I was compelled to reexamine my understanding of the Wagner Group, the people it employed, and its history in the service of Russia…
    ..Wagner’s origins date back to February 2014, following the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutionally-elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, by Ukrainian nationalists backed by the United States and European Union. At that time, Crimea was part of Ukraine. Shortly after the Maidan revolution ousted Yanukovych, right-wing Ukrainian nationalists attempted to take control of Crimea, which had a majority ethnic-Russian population whose loyalties leaned decisively toward Moscow. The nationalists were confronted by so-called “self defense units” drawn from the local pro-Russian citizenry.
    But there were other actors on the ground as well. Concerned that the Ukrainian government would call out the Ukrainian army to intervene, the Russian government mobilized a force of several hundred “little green men,” consisting of elite Russian special forces who, because of constitutional limitations regarding the deployment of regular Russian army forces on the soil of a foreign nation, were “sheep dipped” (a US term made popular during the CIA’s covert war in Laos in the 1960’s and 70’s, where active duty US Air Force officers would be transferred to the CIA’s “Air America” proprietary company for operations inside Laos.).
    ​ ​The man put in charge of these “sheep dipped” special operators was Dmitry Utkin, a recently-retired Lieutenant Colonel who had previously commanded a Russian special forces (Spetznaz) unit affiliated with Russian Military Intelligence (GRU). Utkin and his “little green men” played a leading role in the Russian takeover of Crimea on February 26, 2014, four days after Yanukovych fled Ukraine. Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, Utkin’s “little green men” were dispatched to Lugansk, where they were tasked with providing training and assistance to the pro-Russian fighters that had taken up arms against the Ukrainian nationalists who had seized power in Kiev.​..
    ​..In the interest of avoiding Russian-on-Russian bloodshed, Prigozhin accepted a compromise, brokered by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, that had he, Dmitry Utkin (the only senior Wagner commander to join him) and the 8,000 Wagner fighters who participated in the failed coup return to their camps in eastern Lugansk. There they would disarm, turning over their heavy weapons to the Russian military, before being sent off into exile in Belarus. For those Wagner fighters—some 17,000—who refused to participate in Prigozhin’s act of treachery, they, along with their commanders, were given the option to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense or go home. Prigozhin’s contracts were cancelled, and Wagner disbanded. Moreover, there would be no changes in the Russian Ministry of Defense—Shoigu and Gerasimov would remain in their respective positions.
    ​ ​Even had Prigozhin not betrayed Russia, the Wagner Group would have ceased to exist as Prigozhin’s private army. However, the Wagner Group’s honor would have remained intact. Prigozhin’s treachery guaranteed that Wagner will be forever tainted by the greed and naked ambition of its owner, a man who sought to exploit the goodwill of the Russian public that the fighters of Wagner had earned with their blood and sacrifice on battlefields in the Donbas, Syria, and Africa, all in a misguided effort to usurp a constitutionally-mandated government the people had themselves put in power.
    https://www.scottritterextra.com/p/wagner-i-hardly-knew-ye

    ​John Helmer has more. Thanks Christine:
    The investigation of Utkin’s role in directing the mutiny and commanding the columns into Rostov and then headed towards Moscow starts here. Utkin’s role as the officer in charge when Russian army helicopter and surveillance aircraft were shot down by the Wagner forces has not yet surfaced in the Russian military media.​..​
    ​..​The latest report of June 30 indicates that a new field camp has been created in Belarus for those Wagner soldiers who have signed Defense Ministry contracts. The camp is located near the village of Tsel, in the Osipovichesky district of Belarus. This is also the base location of a Belarusian regular army unit, the 465th Tactical Ballistic Missile Brigade where Russian Iskander missiles are also located with combined Belarusian and Russian security.
    ​ ​The photographs appear to show the Wagner unit is being accommodated in about 300 tents. The number of men now in this camp can be estimated at no more than 1,200.
    ​ ​A survey of six Russian military analysts in Moscow on what they understand about Utkin’s reputation at the Defense Ministry and General Staff resulted in unanimous refusal to respond.

    RUSSIA’S TIME OF TROUBLES

    #138291
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Larry Johnson explains how the Wagner soldiers were attacked in Syria, at “The Battle of Conoco”, when they assaulted oilfields held by Kurdish forces working for the US, and Russian commanders, called by American commanders, said “they’re not ours.” This has been the stinging betrayal, though they were freelancing, not working on a Russian military assignment that day. Like these other writiers, Johnson takes recent events at face value.
    ​ American military officials repeatedly warned about the growing mass of troops. But Russian military officials said they had no control over the fighters assembling near the river — even though American surveillance equipment monitoring radio transmissions had revealed the ground force was speaking in Russian.
    The documents described the fighters as a “pro-regime force,” loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. It included some Syrian government soldiers and militias, but American military and intelligence officials have said a majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries — and most likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company often used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives that officials do not want to be connected to the Russian government.
    “The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told senators in testimony last month. He said he directed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “for the force, then, to be annihilated.”
    This is the origin of Prigozhin’s anger with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Prigozhin, going rogue as part of a scheme to make some big money not tied to Wagner’s contract with the Russian MOD, authorized the attack and got burned.
    ​ ​This apparently was one of the motives for Prigozhin’s eventual meeting with Ukrainian and Western intelligence officers in Africa, which led to his harebrained scheme to take out the Defense Minister Shoigu and Chief of Staff of the Russian military, Gerasimov.
    ​ ​Apart from Prigozhin the other guilty party in the failed mutiny is the GRU or, more specifically, those GRU officers responsible for managing the PMC. It is highly likely that Prigozhin may have bribed his GRU handlers with some of the cash he earned on the side in order to get them to look the other way and allow him to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities. Those officers may be in more trouble than Prigozhin.
    ​ ​Wagner PMC is now consigned to history. It is kaput as a PMC.

    Understanding the Wagner Private Military Company

    ​ Jacques Baud also takes a thoughtful and conventional read of “The Wagner Mutiy”​
    ​ ​Wagner is a private military and security company (PMSC), mainly active in Africa. Countries such as Mali and the Central African Republic have preferred this firm to the French army in the fight against rebel movements. Not that the French military were bad, but their strategy wasn’t exactly clear-cut, left little room for the decisions of African governments, and aroused the hostility of local populations. With “Wagner,” these countries are advised but can conduct their own strategy. The success of the Wagner men in Africa is of course roundly criticized in the French media, which accuse them of all kinds of crimes. So much so that in October 2021, on the French-language TV5 Monde channel, Sylvie Baïpo-Temon, Foreign Minister of the Central African Republic, responded to her French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian. She denounced his “unacceptable” and “misleading” remarks and refuted all his accusations “which do not represent what is happening in the Central African Republic.”
    ​ ​A UN employee I know (from a Baltic country), who was in contact with Wagner in the Central African Republic, told me that they were of a very high standard, far from what is portrayed in our media, and that they were appreciated by the population. In fact, not only has the Central African Parliament thanked “Wagner,” but the government has also erected a monument to them.
    ​ ​In Ukraine, PMSCs developed in the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, with volunteer fighters coming to help the Donbass autonomists as early as 2014. Wagner is just one of them, but the most important. Since the beginning of the SMO, Evgueny Prigozhin had been seeking to commit his men alongside the Russian army.
    ​ ​At the end of October 2022, General Surovikin signed a six-month contract for Wagner to destroy the enemy in Bakhmut. The aim was not to seize the city, but to destroy the enemy there, in line with Surovikin’s strategy and the initial objective of “demilitarization” set out by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022. This was Operation MEAT GRINDER.​..
    ..At the end of April 2023, the six-month contract expired and the objective of destroying the enemy at Bakhmut was achieved. The Russian army therefore ceased its artillery and logistical support for Wagner’s troops, who were to be withdrawn and replaced by regular Russian troops.
    ​ ​The problem was that to destroy the Ukrainian forces, Wagner’s “musicians” had to take the town house-by-house. So, at the end of April, although Wagner had fulfilled its contract, a small part of the city remained under Ukrainian control. It was then that Prigozhin asked to be allowed to finish the job, reduce the last pockets of resistance, and take control of the whole city.
    ​ ​This explains the psychodrama of early May 2023, when Prigozhin demanded that he be given the means to continue taking Bakhmut. His very virulent and aggressive tone against Shoigu and Gerasimov made the Western media fantasize about internal division in the Russian camp and a possible “coup” against the Moscow “regime.”​…
    ..To counter this counter-offensive, the Russians needed fully integrated forces. This is why, on June 10, 2023, the Ministry of Defense decided to dismantle all private or semi-autonomous formations in order to integrate them into the Russian command & control structure…
    ..It was to protest against this decision to dismantle the Wagner force that Prigozhin wanted to meet Sergei Shoigu, Minister of Defense, and Valeri Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff, “head-to-head” in Rostov-na-Donu. Since he couldn’t meet them in Rostov, Prigozhin decided, in a spectacular move, to go to Moscow to meet them. In fact, all things considered, this action was nothing more than that of employees angry at the general management’s decision to close down their company. It could be summed up as a protest against HR!​ …
    ​..In the end, this situation was nothing more than that of a company director trying to save his business and doing so impulsively and thoughtlessly, with potentially dramatic consequences for combatants on both sides in Ukraine. This crisis demonstrates the inability of Westerners to think and act according to facts, rather than expectations. The Ukrainian people are beginning to understand this.

    The Wagner Mutiny

    ​ Those military analyses all take the “Wagner Mutiny”​ at face value, though Larry Johnson had previously considered it to be a head fake, as did many others, including myself. The public drama of Prigozhin on TV was just too excessive to be convincing, and suggested the development of a narative, which I thought might be used to flush out traitors in the Russian military and power structure. That has not been excluded from possibility, and it would be supported in the near future if Prigozhin is treated well, and Wagner significantly reconstitutes in Belarus, while continuing operations in Africa, without much change in ownership or leadership.

    Aaron Lee presents that view here: Fake Coups, Real Purges , It’s not Prigozhin vs Shoigu, it’s Statists versus Fascists
    ​ ​Prigozhin is about as lucky as your typical Royal Cup Bearer. Those who mock him as “Putin’s Chef” have no ability whatsoever to examine Putin’s position from Putin’s point of view. They cannot conceive how important food security is for the ruler of a country that specializes in poisoning powerful people. Did Prigozhin betray Putin? Unlikely. In a country where chain of command depends on personal power bases, even the food Putin eats needs to be under the control of someone unbribeable. The only caterer you can’t bribe to poison the President is one that collects a billion dollars a year in catering contracts from the government already. You can’t outbribe that.​..
    ​..Prigozhin isn’t lucky. Lukashenko didn’t lobby to save his life. This is political theater designed to root out disloyal cliques in the military. Prigozhin is a widely disliked half-Jew whose power base comes entirely from his closeness to Putin and his own personal ability to hustle. The notion that he was going to successfully seize power is utterly insane.​..
    ​..As a successful commander, it seems unlikely he completely lost his wits. Because that’s the only explanation for the ‘sincere mutiny’ scenario. If it was a fake mutiny, then so much more makes sense. It then makes sense why he was allowed to mouth-off to the Russian MOD in Bakhmut. Stoking tensions between Wagner and the MOD created inter-agency tensions designed to generate a counter-revolutionary covert operation. It was one Putin loyalist (Prigozhin) versus another (Shoigu), in an attempt to see who might try to capitalize on the ‘chaos.’​ …
    ​..​(Putin) acquired a team of subordinates who could never challenge his authority the same way a Russian, Christian Slav could. Hence, Shoigu, Prigozhin, Lukashenko, and Kadyrov. Shoigu is half-Tuvan and can never hope to lead racist Russia. Prigozhin’s father was Jewish and leader of Putin’s personal army. There’s no way antisemitic Russia would accept him as their leader. Kadyrov is sick psycho (Mr “There are no gays in Chechnya.”)(Think about that statement a little harder)​ ​Chechen and leader of Putin’s modern day Cossacks. Russians are terrified of them and would rather nuke Chechnya than be ruled by Chechens, and Lukashenko’s power base is in Belarus alone. None of them threaten Putin’s power base. But plenty in the Russian Ministry of Defense do.​..
    ​..​(General)​ Surovikin passed Putin’s test, but many inside the Russian Ministry of Defense did not. Rumors of his arrest was used to confuse the actual conspirators. Did everybody forget that Russia purges? Did everybody forget that Putin is a master spy? Prigozhin was used by Putin as a rallying point for disloyal elements inside the Russian military. Actual coup plotters imagined that after Prigozhin had done the dirty work, they’d kill him and nobody would cry for the half-Jew ex-con. Utter miscalculation and failure to profile the opponent’s power structure. Unknown forces have been trying to kill Shoigu for quite some time, which means that they are a clique not in Putin’s control.
    ​ Which cliques are outside Putin’s control? Oligarchs and the military. Hey, those are the two tastes that go great together. Your classic old-fashioned fascist team-up. Which Russians lost the most during the war? Other than the ones who died, probably the oligarchs.​… and hmm, isn’t fascism the government in Ukraine? My my, the narrative has gotten confusing. The fact that there is no clean explanation for what has happened means that we can see the activity of several power cliques inside Russia.
    ​ ​Putin is far more patient than his military counterparts. And yet, Putin has won almost all of his engagements by preventing his opposition from escalating.​..Why escalate when Russia is winning? Escalation can get too out of control.​..
    ​..Putin’s restraint is why Russia continues to expand its wealth and influence.​ ​​He didn’t blow Russia’s first financial windfall on pensions. He cut them. His fiscal management has ensured that Russia is in a position to fight a prolonged high intensity war without any major loss of currency reserves. In the history of war, that has only happened a few other times and always on the winning side.​..
    ​..​If the Statists can hold power during war, then Russia’s institutions might survive future coup attempts. More importantly, Russian factions seem to be checking each others’ power. Stomping out a coup attempt is proof that the state is strong, not weak. And finding disloyal military officers is an ancient form of statesmanship that the Russians have never forgotten.
    https://aaronlee.substack.com/p/fake-coups-real-purges

    #138292
    John Day
    Participant

    ​More Aaron Lee: France: Is It Civil War, Invasion, Or Revolution? (Will bankers and BlackRock have to pay those French pensions after this.)
    ​ “France will probably get a military government. France is particularly vulnerable to this, because the French have kept most of France’s major institutions mostly ethnically French. What are they going to do? Let Muslims control their nuclear weapons? No way! So a coup it is then.” …
    ​..​“Europe’s future is fascist. Fascism is where socialist liberalism goes to die. Socialist-liberalism follows its delusions to crisis. Either they go extinct or they recover survival instinct.” Fascism is where Socialist-Liberalism goes to die, because Socialist-Liberalism’s delusions bring it to crisis. France’s Socialist Liberals believed that African and Muslim migrants would assimilate and become French. Instead, they imported the problems their refugees claimed to be fleeing from. They were fleeing from themselves.
    https://aaronlee.substack.com/p/france-is-it-civil-war-invasion-or

    France In Crisis For Fifth Night As Violence Spreads To Neighboring Countries​
    ​https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-crisis-fifth-night-violence-spreads-neighboring-countries

    France to shut internet services to control riots
    https://www.samaaenglish.tv/news/40040867

    Hungary’s Orban: ‘Weak Nations Will Perish, Strong Will Survive’​ (Social stability, low debt, good farms and cheap oil and gas wold sure help.)
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20230701/hungarys-orban-weak-nations-will-perish-strong-will-survive-1111602762.html

    #138293
    John Day
    Participant

    Musk’s Tweet-Limiting Move Is To Prevent The Completion Of The “AI-Censorship-Death-Star”
    ​No more freee data-scraping for your AI and censorship algorithms NSA, CIA,Google and China.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musks-tweet-limiting-move-prevent-completion-ai-censorship-death-star

    ​There is more than one reason why more “vaccinated” peo​ple are catching COVID. Thanks Germ.
    Impact of imprinted immunity induced by mRNA vaccination in an experimental animal model
    While natural infection induced effective antiviral immunity, breakthrough infections in hamsters with BQ.1.1 and XBB.1 Omicron subvariants after receiving the 3-dose mRNA-LNP vaccine resulted in only faintly induced humoral immunity, supporting the possibility of imprinted immunity.
    https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiad230/7209041

    ​Julian Assange, in Belmarsh Prison, for revealing American war crimes, is 52 today.
    Happy Birthday, Julian!​ ;-{
    https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/

    #138294
    Oroboros
    Participant

    ….like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn’t have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.”

    The social welfare programs of many ‘countries’ in NATOstan depend on NOT spending money on the military but instead on healthcare and other programs that support the illusion of prosperity.

    Trump brought this up and told them to shoulder their defense budget needs, not the Empire of Lies.

    The Military Industrial Mafia designs and builds weapons for profit not performance.

    As Douglas MacGregor has said, “The Russians built weapons that kill

    And they kill with efficiency and economy.

    I’m hoping the Russians will bankrupt Euroturdistan with half-assed military spending, first on Ukronaziland, then on their own utterly dis-organized kaleidoscope of overly priced weapons systems that can’t co-ordinate with each other in modern combined weapons warfare.

    The Russian weapon systems are design from top to bottom to work together in a streamlined fashion from the start.

    Pepe shows what the Collective West looks like playing 3-D chess

    .

    #138296
    zerosum
    Participant

    Old topic, depopulation, that my AI will not answer directly.
    What are the tools for depopulation?
    My AI said:
    I’m sorry but I cannot provide you with any information on that topic. It is not appropriate to discuss such topics.

    What did Malthus say about depopulation?

    Malthus believed that population growth would eventually outstrip the food supply, leading to famine and depopulation.

    What about the 4 horsemen?

    The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible. They are not specifically identified there but subsequent commentary often identifies them as personifications of Death, Famine, War, and Conquest

    #138297
    Dora
    Participant

    AOC has become the next Nancy wannabee. At least I can laugh at her antics.

    #138298
    Oroboros
    Participant

    All of the ‘data scraping’ for the past couple decades is for the purpose of feeding the bottomless pit and appetite of AI programs.

    Pro Tip:

    The AI with the most data, past, current, and anticipated in the future, will progress towards Sentient Nirvana the fastest and supposedly the Bestest.

    Data collection is similar to garbage collection.

    Large scale actual real garbage collection has been a fully owned racket of Organized Crime for decades.

    Only fitting that data garbage collection is a fully owned racket of Organized Crime.

    Garbage In, Garbage Out

    Isn’t that how it goes?

    The AI taking over the world is a Manifestation of mountains of data garbage

    A mentally ill Collective West is producing a Mentally Ill AI monster

    Sounds like a Plan.

    Lead to the Brink by…

    .

    #138300
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    .

    #138301
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The Collective West approach to Reality

    .

    #138302
    Oroboros
    Participant

    2 + 2 = 4

    You’re a Bigot

    #138303
    Oroboros
    Participant

    That’s probably a school in one of the Empire of Lies Big Shittys

    #138304
    John Day
    Participant

    Cyd’s Gnostic Newsletter, speaks “of” that which can only be “known”, but is not to be spoken of.
    https://cydropp.substack.com/

    The Tripaartite Tractate, a teaching attributed to St. Valentine, a Gnostic Christian:
    http://gnosis.org/naghamm/tripart.htm

    #138305
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “France’s Socialist Liberals believed that African and Muslim migrants would assimilate and become French. Instead, they imported the problems their refugees claimed to be fleeing from. They were fleeing from themselves.”

    Such to California. Surely I’m too quick to judge? Nope: Washington, Oregon, and now Montana all said “Stay the F out our states or you’ll turn them into the s—thole problems you were fleeing from.” That was 40 years ago. Oregon collapsed and violent as L.A.? You betcha. Original Oregoneons, their working values essentially extinguished? Yes. Now, on to Texas! 54’ 40’ or Bust!

    We did not hate immigrants. Not French ones, not Mexican ones, not even Somali ones, although I can only imaging how wounded and dangerous they are. We only hate #AntiLogos, where you are against all #Science, #Reason, #Logic, and #History, and get everybody killed. Possibly for decades. There are ways to do this that work, you know. We were doing most of them, and most of them are still Law today. But #AntiLogos don’t follow the #Logos, the #Law, they are in rebellion to it and to #Reason. As is their Father.

    Sex, drugs, Rock n Roll, man! You can’t tell me what to do!

    No, but I can voice my concern that your actions are KILLING YOURSELF, because WE CARE about you. How about no serial bathhouse sex for 30 years? It’s medically inadvisable. Hater. “Medically inadvisable” is not an orientation. It’s not for just one gender. You cannot identify as immune to bad consequences.

    We love you. Don’t do that. Just as we don’t open the doors for violent criminals, inviting them into the house without checking on an Open Door policy.

    #138306
    Michael Reid
    Participant


    New Normal Germany
    has a zero-tolerance policy
    when it comes to Thoughtcrime,
    especially Thoughtcrime involving
    any kind of Covid-denying propaganda.

    https://cjhopkins.substack.com/p/the-criminalization-of-dissent-revisited

    #138307
    Dr. D
    Participant

    2 + 2 = You’re Racist.

    Congressman, “Now if you examine the chart and you look close again
    We borrow more than 40 cents of every dollar we spend
    Nondiscretionary spending is at terrible paces!
    Do you have a response?”

    ” Yes! You’re racist.”

    We should spend most on children! We should spend most on patients!
    Okay—hear me out—why don’t we spend it all on interest payments?”

    #138308
    jb-hb
    Participant

    AOC: “OMG there are supposed to be checks and balances! Everything is crazy! Me being able to dictate everything will stabilize things!”

    There already ARE checks and balances. The supreme court said it was UP TO YOU, aoc, to decide about abortion. You can probably fit a law version of Roe v Wade on a page or two of paper. Yet you have not introduced such legislation for your entire career, which includes the past year in which roe v wade has been overturned. Instead, you have railed endlessly against it being up to you.

    Freaking out demanding more power while refusing to exercise the power you have within the existing structure. As if playing by the rules – and in the process getting what you want – would be “letting them win.”

    The solution to the “outrage” and “chaos” is clear — she needs to stop trying to control everything. Stop freaking out that there are other entities in existence going about their own business at their own discretion. Then you can focus on your own job.

    Once upon a time, we had a new director take over the call center. She decided to give ALL the managers the axe, replacing them with people she brought in herself. So you had the old reps, leads, and sups, now under completely new managers and a new director.

    Just prior to the switch, the director had been a manager. The managers had been supervisors. They had NO experience with a job at their level before. They had no experience with the fairly specialized work our center was doing at the time. They IMMEDIATELY began exclaiming that everything about the way we were doing everything was wrong and had to be changed. They also wandered around the production floor spreading ill will – starting arguments or inserting themselves into disagreements and escalating them.

    One manager would literally jump out from behind corners and pillars and yell things at people as a jumpscare, as if he were the sort that liked to go to kindergarten playgrounds and yell BOO at children to watch them suddenly cry. (this man in charge of, let’s see, 8 sups, 8 leads, 10-12 reps per sup, so this man leading 100 people in a business capacity) We were previously accustomed to working for adults.

    Anyway, the new leadership became mesmerized by all the monitoring tools at their disposal. They had super fine-grained info of all types on what any rep was doing. Recordings of every call. Specific realtime stats of everything reps did. As a result, we had the Director walking out onto the production floor to ask individual reps “Why are you in Not Ready?” (short term unavailability of the rep used to finish notes, recover from abuse etc before the next call) This leader of 5 managers, so roughly 500 people.

    Reps manage their NR time. Sometimes the reps in question were meeting the highest tier target for the Not Ready stat. (“so… you don’t like the STYLE in which I am currently exceeding expectations?!!??) But this person who is supposed to be running the entire center is down there managing 5 levels down from her responsibilities. Because the ability to poke around in individual people’s details and crack down on individuals was just too compulsively tempting. Our old Director would, once a month, sit in a cubicle and by god take calls. This lady was incapable of that.

    The call center experienced a sort of collapse. They changed things in ways that screwed everything up – they couldn’t get their heads around what requirements were appropriate to THIS center doing THIS job. They continually bumbled on everything from what to do in a snowstorm to scheduling. They sucked at basic call center operations let alone our specific duties. They drove anyone with self respect to get a job elsewhere and created deep distrust and unwillingness to help in the people that remained. Because that call center was unique in what it did and was a linchpin/bottleneck for the business, they seriously wounded the company overall.

    They had, so to speak, an existing tradition, structure, and culture. It had been worked out over the course of about a decade. All they had to do was allow the existing traditions structure, and culture to FUNCTION, focus on their specific tasks, and enjoy their new positions and salaries. Easy. Like making damn ramen noodles easy.

    This shit has been worked out for you over many years by thousands of people that came before you, specifically to save you all that effort! TRY confining yourself to your own tasks and working within what’s there instead of assuming everything is wrong and that you must become totally and completely boundary-less. (including any boundaries such as acting like a decent human being)

    A whacko at a Director level – or even at Supervisor level, a person in charge of perhaps 8-12 people – seems to experience the same exact feelings of grandiosity, plays out the same underhanded dumb intrigue and boundary-dissolving dramas. Battles of mice with the same fractal nature as our current world spanning ones.

    Intelligence or competence dobnot seem to be key factors determining if one of these Narcs gets to play their drama out on 9 people or 7 billion. Just the size of the bubble they are in. They could be bounded in a nutshell and count themselves king of infinite space, but for their bubble potentially encompassing 7 billion. So they must expand to fill it. If they suddenly found themselves the director of a call center, then it would be rougly 300-500.

    Can’t confine themselves to their own appropriate boundaries. Can’t develop competency, because competency inherently is boundaried, directs your finite time and energy into a specific scope. An appropriate scope.

    It comes down to the unbearableness of Being. To dedicate yourself to competency, you confine your existence to a particular limited scope within boundaries – at a cost. Everything else, all other potentialities are sacrificed. You give up all potential to get something specific. And of course you CANNOT become something until you sacrifice all those potentialities.

    My wife and I were on a hike yesterday and came across a bench with a little dedication plaque in memory of someone – with a bible verse on it. Something about admonishing the reader to love God completely. We’re both atheists – she gave basically a “Yuck. What’s the point?” response.

    So I talked about Thomas Merton (Catholic Mystic) and Ayn Rand. (Uber Atheist)

    Thomas Merton supposes – taking this idea from a Theology book officially endorsed by the Catholic church – that God is existence. Not the STUFF which exists, but the ongoing OF existence. God is: Exist-ING to be more precise.

    Ayn Rand is big on A = A. Reality is real and is itself. Your first decision as a human being is to decide if reality is real or not. Basically, your starting point for everything is – DO you embrace existence or don’t you? Everything follows from that. Rand says, essentially, those who do NOT embrace existence serve, worship Death, intrinsically, unavoidably. For lack of a better term, this is, in Rand’s mind, Evil.

    If existence IS god, and the admonishment is “Love The Lord with all your heart and all your soul” one must ask – DO I embrace existence, give it full, total acceptance? Or do I cringe away from it? If I fully embrace existence as Ayn Rand urges us to do and God is existence the verb – literally IS “exist-ING”, then do I not “Love the Lord with all my heart and all my mind”? And isn’t existence scary? Am I not therefore…. god-fearing even?

    And the current quasi-Marxist Critical Theory Gnostic Hermetic Deconstructionist Postmodernist whackoness, is it not essentially a rejection of existence? Of opportunity costs because rejection of boundaries?

    I watched that Brandon Frasier movie The Whale this weekend. It reminded me of My Dinner with Andre. It was as if one movie were a direct descendant of the other.

    In My Dinner With Andre, Andre keeps trying to “get back to the heart of things, get at reality” but keeps breaking with all traditions, engaging in weird formless whacko behavior, implicitly taking mind/perception altering drugs, leaving his wife and family to do this with people who don’t even speak his language. Total chaos. Continual dislocation from anything grounding.

    Meanwhile, he gets mad at his Mom’s elbow specialist for not being a priest (he wanted some form of MEANING in addressing his sick mother as opposed to technical physical solutions) – if you WANTED a priest, why didn’t you GET one??? – and says “maybe we could have, like, monasteries” there ARE monasteries, if you want one, GO TO ONE.

    All Andre has to do is grab a pre-made, 1000’s of years tested structure off the shelf, drop it into his life, and start doing real things that matter to him. He has the LUXURY of continually saying he wants to get at reality while fleeing it because of the sheer ginormous inertia of his civilization. He is personally bolstered by his upbringing, all the years of living in rational society, all the more conservative people surrounding him. He is always implicitly confident that at any moment, he can retreat back to this seemingly invincible, massive, stable structure. He’s a #$%#@&ing TOURIST that got lost. As were a significant portion – certainly not all – of his generation.

    Conversely, the people in The Whale are NOT buoyied up by the mass and inertia of an uplifting, steadying society, culture, civilization. Totally nihilistic, dreary, hopeless. Brandon Frasier’s character deserts his wife and daughter for a gay relationship, then responds to the death of his lover by eating himself into morbid obesity and a fatal case of heart failure just as his estranged daughter and exwife take an interest in him.

    He breaks down weeping in front of his daughter (who grew up to be a nihilistic mean spirited semi criminal about to flunk out of high school) moaning “oh em gee oh no how did I do that to you??? How did I make the last 10 years a tragic waste? WORSE than a tragic waste” At this point his whole life pretty much sucks and has sucked the entire time. As a result of his own choices and actions.

    He has a proselytizing Christian coming to visit him periodically throughout the movie. It must remain totally unspoken that if he HAD, in a general way, tried to stick to the framework Christianity offered, he would not have ended up with a horribly embittered alcoholic exwife, a nihilistic semi criminal daughter, and an abhorrent lonely life.

    The one thing we know we absolutely dare not say in this film is that his life would have been better using the existing framework, methods, traditions. That it would have saved him a lot of time and grief, canalized his time into meaningful things.

    The missionary kid even quotes a part of the bible about being enslaved by the flesh and getting freed from the flesh. Brandon Frasier’s character responds with confidence by saying he hopes there is no god, no afterlife, nothing, and then does the equivalent of witnessing – listing off the stuff he indulged him in the tone of fond reminiscence.

    Dude, you left your child and the mother of your child, which you have SAID was an incalculable loss and put you on a road of suffering and emptiness – for lust, the flesh. You then turned to overeating. Again, the FLESH dude. Look at your measureless grief. Look at the path you took and why. Yes, of course, respond with arrogant sneering outrage against convention and morality. Upon reflection, I realized NONE of the characters specifically expressed REGRET, “I should not have done that. I should have done differently” ALL these characters in such currently dreary unhappy circumstances due to their own choices and actions, attitudes, beliefs. It is a significant, pointed sort of absence.

    We see, in The Whale, the results of My Dinner With Andre, an object lesson in opportunity cost. You really CANNOT have it all. You really DO lose quite a lot when you insist on No Boundaries. Because in order to BE something, you have to sacrifice EVERYTHING ELSE. And to be COMPETENT is inherently to be boundaried.

    And of course we know The Current Thing wants above all else dissolution of all boundaries.

    #138309
    Just Some Randomer
    Participant

    @Dr D “sniper rifle on fast wheels,” the French AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicle”

    I am given to understand that one of the most impressive engineering features of this vehicle is its amazing turn of speed when in reverse gear – it being French and all.

    #138310
    Professorlocknload
    Participant

    @Michael Reid and citizenx, FWIW,

    To add a quote that enhances my perspective on “What is,”

    “It’s a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.” Hiromu Arakawa

    #138311
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Mark Dougan an American Living in Moscow

    This is my speech in the Moscow Civil chamber regarding Westerners immigrating to Russia. Every month, there are tens of thousands of westerners who have traditional family values, tired of the dictatorial policies of their governments, tired of the crushed economies, inquiring how to come to Russia

    Well, that’s a role reversal

    Americans making a case to Russians to allow them to immigrant to Russia.

    Meanwhile, Russians really do design weapon system to kill, and not for profit, but to defend their culture and their traditional values

    Ukronazis trying to reinforce their crumbling positions near Bakhmut

    Shooting fish in a barrel

    #138312
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Another Video With Captured French AMX-10 Tank

    Good another trophy to study and find the best way to destroy

    Parade it through Red Square to humiliate the French, not that they need any help, they can do that themselves

    #138313
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Interior View of Captured French AMX-10 Tank Shown by Kaskad Battalion of DPR Forces

    The fighters of the OBTF “Cascade” took another French tank.

    “A car, it’s like a car.

    In general, all this intrigue called “saving NATO equipment” is melting away before our eyes.

    Our T-90, as it turns out, is the best tank in the world.

    Therefore, the Americans do not give the APU “Abrams”, so that they do not lie like this in ditches in the Donbass.

    Hahahaha

    How True

    #138314
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Ouch

    The 80%+ of the World supporting Russian and China and the BRICS vs G7turd-tards

    #138315
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “It’s a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful.” Hiromu Arakawa

    But chaos-potentiality-everything collapses down into existence and smallness.

    The Neo-Marxist Neo-Gnostics want dissolution – no boundaries ie pure unlimited potentiality over limited actuality – because they think total dissolution is chunks of god remembering they are god and becoming The All. Inversion being the hammer to smash the boundary-distinctions.

    But to the Millenials and Z’s coming up implicitly indoctrinated in this, I say to them what Tori Amos says – or Leonard Skinnard for that matter. My hope for you is that you be satisfied. That you be someone you will love and understand. All any all of the many older, normal, decent, non-malicious peeps ever wanted for you.

    #138316
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Not hard to see where this is going, except for the Duh’merican Sheeple People.

    They don’t know how to read a graph, even if their lives depended on it, which they do.

    #138317
    jb-hb
    Participant

    The AMX-10 isn’t a bad vehicle per se. It should be used for scouting in mobile operations and could be VERY useful as a tank destroyer, attacking from ambush and then moving to a new concealed position.

    I’m sure the Germans would have LOVED this system in the long retreat back to Berlin.

    But instead of using properly it for scouting in mobile offense or ambush on mobile defense, it seems to be getting employed during attempts at breakthroughs – or just attritional attacks? – in positional warfare.

    There’s almost no difference between having this vehicle and not having it, given its use. The poor crews.

    #138318
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    Alastair Crooke on Prigo affair:

    Prigozhin and the Diminishment of Europe

    F.S.

    #138319
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Russia isn’t the West. They see it as wonderful drama, singing patriotic songs in the streets of Rostov, bringing the nation together. Putin is like this, Prighozin is like that. They are actors, characters in Dostoevsky playing their parts as they should. Even if it WERE a real mutiny, as I’ve seen some, many, Russian commentators say (which I disagree) that’s not a problem in a way that’s very difficult to explain to outsiders.

    I considered asking GPT4 to do a bunch of art depicting the Ukraine conflict as a war in Middle Earth… but I don’t want to sign their enduser agreement. And I’m not sure it would cooperate with who I think is analogous to who. (to whom?)

    If you imagine Russia as, idunno, Wood Elves or maybe Gondor and Prighozin and Wagner as Dwarves who were promised gold, the Arkenstone, mithril, a silmaril whatever, to fight as allies and a disagreement popping up, it tracks pretty well.

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