Sep 102023
 
 September 10, 2023  Posted by at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Fall of Icarus 1558

 

Wrongheaded US Leadership in Ukraine – Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Nap (Sp.)
Ice Cracking Sounds On Frozen Lake of US-Russia Relations (Bhadrakumar)
Musk Talked To Russian Ambassador Before Starlink Decision – WaPo (RT)
Musk: US Military Vulnerability Due to Slow Production Rate, Like Ukraine (Sp.)
NATO’s DU ‘Perfect Storm’ of Toxic Pollution in Breadbasket Ukraine (Tweedie)
Biden Admin Likely Violated 1st Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit (ZH)
Ukraine Will Be Ready To Join EU In Two Years – Kiev (RT)
G20 Declaration On Ukraine A ‘Blow To Western Countries’ (Sp.)
Russia and China Have Effectively Ditched The Dollar – Moscow (RT)
The Daunting Physics of ‘Bidenomics’ (Rall)
World Is ‘Laughing At’ The US – Alaska Governor (RT)
‘Greedflation’ Ravaging Western Europe – Nikkei (RT)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back (ET)
Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Drops Bombshell (GP)
Japan’s Mount Fuji ‘In Real Crisis’ – Officials (RT)

 

 

Japan vaccine

 

 

 

 

Hoax

 

 

 

 

Obama Minimize
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700313493428228549

 

 

 

 

DARPA McCullough

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent conversation.

“Tony, look at a map,” and just look at the progress that “has not been made by Ukraine..”

Wrongheaded US Leadership in Ukraine – Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Nap (Sp.)

The United States is blatantly lying about the botched Ukrainian counteroffensive, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said in an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano on his Judging Freedom podcast. “Tony, look at a map,” and just look at the progress that “has not been made by Ukraine,” said the retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, as he commented on recent remarks made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kiev. During his unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital, Blinken, standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, touted that the Ukrainian military had made “real progress” in its counteroffensive in the “last few weeks.” The Ukrainian president’s assessment of the battlefront developments “matches our own,” continued Blinken, who went over to Kiev to pledge a new aid package for Ukraine worth over $1 billion.

In fact, “Russia has been steadily pushing to the [west],” Johnson said, pointing out that the battle of Artemovsk was the “last big conflict” on the battlefront that Ukraine’s military was engaged in. “They [the US] don’t understand Russian defensive tactics,” Johnson emphasized. In May 2023, the Russian military liberated Artemovsk (also known as Bakhmut), a Donbass city reduced to ruins in over eight months of brutal house-to-house fighting. The Artemovsk operation destroyed tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries, while Russia built up its reserves and prepared defenses in Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson for Kiev’s much-heralded summer offensive

“Americans have been had,” added Ray McGovern, a former top US intel analyst, who also joined the Judging Freedom podcast. He pointed out that, “Billions of money had gone to Ukraine, with a lot of it syphoned off.” He told the host that America was “losing” in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Nevertheless, senior-level members of the US intelligence community continue “to delude themselves, their colleagues, the press, and the public,” regarding the actual developments on the ground, specified Larry Johnson. These officials refused to wake up to the reality that Ukraine was experiencing “shortage of ammunition, shortage of manpower, trouble recruiting people,” etc.

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“What distinguishes Umerov is that he was a key negotiator at the peace talks with Russia in Istanbul last year in March, which actually resulted in an agreed document … Again, he was instrumental in negotiating the Black Sea Grain Initiative..”

Ice Cracking Sounds On Frozen Lake of US-Russia Relations (Bhadrakumar)

Meanwhile, on September 6, Blinken embarked on quite an untypical visit to Kiev. There was no fire in his belly. For once, he didn’t threaten Russia or ridicule Putin from Ukrainian soil. Nor did Blinken show much enthusiasm for Kiev’s counteroffensive. Rather, his focus was on the war’s horrific trail causing human suffering, Ukraine’s post-conflict recovery as a democracy and its economy’s reconstruction. Blinken said repeatedly that he was undertaking the visit on Biden’s instruction. In the presence of President Zelensky, Blinken stated:

“We are determined in the United States to continue to walk side by side with you. And President Biden asked me to come, to reaffirm strongly our support, to ensure that we are maximising the efforts that we’re making and other countries are making for the immediate challenge of the counteroffensive as well as the longer-term efforts to help Ukraine build a force for the future that can deter and defend against any future aggression, but also to work with you and support you as you engage in the critical work of strengthening your democracy, rebuilding your economy.”

Stirring words, but there was no boastful talk of liberating Crimea, carrying the fight into the Russian camp or forcing Russia to vacate the annexed territories and negotiating with Russia only from a position of strength. At Blinken’s joint press availability with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, the latter claimed that they had a “substantive” discussion on providing long-range rockets, ATACMS to Kiev. But Blinken sidestepped the topic. The most unusual thing about Blinken’s visit was that it spilled over to a second day. This must be the first time Blinken spent a night in Ukraine. Blinken had a rather tight schedule on the first day meeting Kuleba, Zelensky and Prime Minister Denis Shmigal, but the itinerary for the second day [September 7], was left open. Obviously, he came to Kiev for some serious discussions.

Conceivably, Biden could be interested in starting peace talks between Moscow and Kiev now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to meet its politico-military objectives, and there are worrisome signs of support waning in America and Europe for the proxy war, while a Russian offensive could deal a knockout punch on Ukraine’s military. Both Russian and western estimates are that close to 65-70,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in these past 3 months alone since Kiev’s “counteroffensive” began. Meanwhile, in an interesting coincidence, on September 6, Ukraine’s parliament Verkhovna Rada approved the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the new Defence Minister replacing Alexei Reznikov. A Crimean Tatar born in Uzbekistan (USSR), Umerov has no previous military background. But he is trusted by Zelensky and is acceptable to the Americans.

What distinguishes Umerov is that he was a key negotiator at the peace talks with Russia in Istanbul last year in March, which actually resulted in an agreed document (from which Zelensky subsequently retracted under Anglo-American pressure.) Again, he was instrumental in negotiating the Black Sea Grain Initiative (so-called grain deal between Ukraine and Russia) which became operational in July last year at Istanbul. These are straws in the wind that must be duly noted.

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Even RT gets it upside down: “..secretly instructed engineers to turn off coverage..” No, he did not. There was never any coverage to be shut down. He declined to activate it.

Musk Talked To Russian Ambassador Before Starlink Decision – WaPo (RT)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke to Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, before making the decision to switch off his Starlink satellite internet service in Crimea last September to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the peninsula, the Washington Post has reported. On Thursday, the paper published more details about Musk cutting Starlink coverage to prevent a Ukrainian seaborne drone strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol. The events that occurred have been described in a biography of the tech billionaire by historian Walter Isaacson that is due to hit shelves next week. With Kiev’s forces poised to launch their attack, Musk spoke with Antonov, who told him that a strike on Crimea, which became part of Russia after a referendum in 2014, “could lead to a nuclear response” by Moscow, Isaacson said in his book.

“In later conversations with a few other people, he [Musk] seemed to imply that he had spoken directly to [Russian] President Vladimir Putin, but to me he said his communications had gone through the ambassador,” the historian wrote. According to Isaacson, Musk concluded that “allowing the use of Starlink for the attack… could be a disaster for the world.” He therefore took matters into his own hands and secretly instructed engineers to turn off coverage within 100km of the Crimean coast. As a result of the move, the six explosive-laden Ukrainian drones, which relied on Starlink for navigation, “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.” Musk started receiving “frantic” calls from Kiev as soon as the Ukrainians realized that the satellite service wasn’t working.

They tried to explain to the billionaire that the drones were “crucial to their fight for freedom,” but Musk still refused to switch Starlink back on. He argued that Ukraine was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat” by targeting Crimea, Isaacson wrote. The historian also claimed that Musk had discussed the situation with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, explaining to them that he didn’t intend for Starlink to be used for offensive purposes. Musk provided a slightly different account of events in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), saying that Starlink was never active around Crimea and that he simply turned down Ukrainian calls to provide coverage in the area.

“If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he argued. Commenting on revelations from Isaacson’s book, Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, said that Musk’s decision was the result of “a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.” The billionaire “committed evil” by allowing the Russian fleet to continue striking Ukrainian targets with Kalibr missiles, he claimed. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy head of the country’s Security Council, described Musk as “the last adequate mind in North America” for preventing a strike on Crimea.

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It’s going to take many years.

Musk: US Military Vulnerability Due to Slow Production Rate, Like Ukraine (Sp.)

US military vulnerability primarily “stems from the slow pace of production,” American entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk has pointed out. The tech guru took to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), to comment on last year’s post by the company Anduril Industries. On its five-year anniversary, the military technology company had argued the need for a joint effort if it was expected to “transform US and allied military capabilities with advanced technology.” We need “a new group of defense technology companies to Reboot the Arsenal of Democracy,” the firm had stated. The entrepreneur also emphasized that making new prototypes is easy, but putting them into production is hard.

This comes as the third month of Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive has wrapped up, with the Kiev regime unable to boast any significant military gains, while US stockpiles of munitions are getting “dangerously low”. As of August 30, 2023, Ukraine has reportedly lost 466 airplanes, 247 helicopters, 6,234 unmanned aerial vehicles, 433 air defense missile systems, 11,570 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, 1,146 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 6,128 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 12,528 special military motor vehicles since the beginning of the special military operation.

Meanwhile, the US unveiled the latest military package for the Kiev regime, worth $250 million, late in August, including AIM-9M missiles for air defense, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, mine-clearing equipment, Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets, three million rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as other items. However, by continuing to funnel military aid to Kiev the US is reportedly fast-depleting its own military caches of various weapons. Thus, depletion of US stockpiles of 155mm artillery shells (for howitzer use) was recently cited in a US report, with the additional revelation that Washington was sending Kiev 155mm and 105mm shells for the simple reason that it no longer had adequate stockpiles of 155mm shells.

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“..high-level radioactive waste contaminants can be found in uranium waste streams that then get made into depleted uranium.”

NATO’s DU ‘Perfect Storm’ of Toxic Pollution in Breadbasket Ukraine (Tweedie)

NATO-supplied depleted uranium (DU) rounds will contaminate Ukraine’s ‘breadbasket’ grain-growing regions with radioactive waste, a nuclear watchdog has warned. This week the US followed the UK in announcing the supply of the controversial armor-piercing rounds for the M1 Abrams tanks it is supplying to the Kiev regime. British Challenger 2 tanks equipped with DU penetrators have already seen action in the Zaporozye region — with at least one meeting a fiery end. Depleted uranium is the left-over material from the enrichment process used to make fuel rods for nuclear power reactors and — at higher levels — elements of nuclear weapons. The concentration of fissile uranium-235 isotope in depleted uranium is about 0.3 percent, 40 percent of the level of element in its unenriched state, but it still emits around 60 percent as much atomic radiation as natural uranium.

Most of that is in the form of alpha particles from U-238 and U-234 — the most harmful form of radiation if ingested into the body — with beta particles given out by decay products that form within a few weeks. Watchdog Kevin Kamps told Sputnik that US national security spokesman John Kirby’s claim that DU penetrator rods were not radioactive or carcinogenic was simply not true. “Depleted uranium munitions are really intended to be armor piercing. They can bust tanks, they can penetrate through concrete,” Kamps explained. “It’s because they’re so dense. Uranium is the densest isotope an element on the periodic table.” The harmful nature of DU is well understood, the expert pointed out. “Uranium in nature is hazardous to begin with,” Kamps said. “It’s a toxic heavy metal. It is what they say as mildly radioactive, which is kind of a misnomer, radioactivity is hazardous even in mild form.”

He added that DU is often mixed with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. “In both the United States, where this depleted uranium munitions is coming from, but also in other countries, there’s a mixing of uranium waste streams off of the enrichment process,” Kamps noted. “And what that can often mean is high-level radioactive waste contaminants can be found in uranium waste streams that then get made into depleted uranium.” What makes DU even more toxic is its pyrophoric properties — the material ignites on hitting its target, as well as pulverizing into microscopic dust from the near-hypersonic velocity impact. “It’s kind of the perfect storm of hazard. You’ve got toxic heavy metal, you’ve got radioactivity that can be contaminated with much higher level radioactivity from high-level radioactive waste,” Kamps stressed. “And then it turns into a fine dust that you can breathe in, that blows on the wind, that settles on the water and flows downstream and downwind and harms people and other living beings all along the way.”

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I posted Justin Hart’s tweet yesterday, with a long list of officials affected by the decision. Will they stop?

Biden Admin Likely Violated 1st Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit (ZH)

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that several Biden administration officials had likely breached the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to moderate or take down content they deemed problematic. And here is Exhibit A of that First Amendment-crushing coercion and collusion… which obviously began in the Trump-era under Anthony Fauci. ZeroHedge was banned from Twitter one day after this email. In an unsigned 75-page opinion, three 5th Circuit judges agreed with the plaintiffs that the administration “ran afoul of the First Amendment” by at times threatening social media platforms with antitrust action or changes to law protecting them from liability.

However, as The Epoch Times’ Aldgra Fredly reports, the three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed much of an injunction issued by a Louisiana judge that restricted Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration from communicating with social media companies. The court said that the White House, Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment. “It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference,” the three-judge panel said in a 74-page ruling (pdf) on Sept. 8. “But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression,” they added.

The court found that the officials made “express threats” and “inflammatory accusations” by saying that the platforms were “poisoning the public” and “killing people.” The platforms were told they needed to take “greater responsibility and action.” “Then, they followed their statements with threats of ‘fundamental reforms’ like regulatory changes and increased enforcement actions that would ensure the platforms were ‘held accountable’. But, beyond express threats, there was always an unspoken ‘or else,'” it added. The court also said the officials encouraged social media platforms to moderate content by “exercising active, meaningful control over those decisions,” particularly concerning the platforms’ moderation policies.

According to the ruling, the FBI “regularly met with the platforms, shared ‘strategic information,’ frequently alerted the social media companies to misinformation spreading on their platforms, and monitored their content moderation policies.” “But, the FBI went beyond that—they urged the platforms to take down content. Turning to the Second Circuit’s four-factor test, we find that those requests were coercive,” it added. The judges emphasized that the government cannot supervise a platform’s content moderation decisions and cannot impose “legal, regulatory, or economic consequences” if they refuse to comply with a given request. “Social media platforms’ content-moderation decisions must be theirs and theirs alone,” the court asserted.

The attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, along with several social media users, had sued last year, saying Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter engaged in censorship as a result of repeated urging by government officials and threats of heightened regulatory enforcement. The lawsuit said the censored views included content questioning anti-COVID-19 measures such as masks and vaccine mandates and allegations of election fraud.

Watters 5th circuit

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Not going to happen.

Ukraine Will Be Ready To Join EU In Two Years – Kiev (RT)

Ukraine should be ready to become an EU member in the next two years, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina told Voice of America on Friday. As Kiev’s official responsible for “European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” she says her nation is one of the “best prepared” for such a step. “I believe that two years would be enough for full preparedness,” Stefanishina said, when asked about Ukraine’s EU prospects. She also vowed to do “10 times more than we do now” to achieve the goal once the conflict with Moscow ends. However, the minister admitted that the timeline would ultimately be determined by the “course of war.”

According to Stefanishina, Ukraine remains one of the “best prepared [nations] for the EU accession” since it is “a big part of the European economy” even in the midst of armed conflict. The country is one of the EU’s “top 20” import partners and the Ukrainian domestic market is “the biggest” on the territory of Europe, she stated. At the same time, she admitted that Ukraine’s economic role in the EU would remain largely agricultural. “With all those agricultural lands… there can be no reality, in which Ukraine stops being an agrarian country,” she said. The bloc itself has been in no rush to accept Kiev into its ranks. EU officials have refused to set specific timelines for Ukraine’s accession, saying that it must first address issues such as rampant corruption and introduce comprehensive legal reforms. In 2022, France said that the process might eventually take years.

In early September, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg warned that fast-tracking membership for Ukraine would spell “geostrategic disaster” since it would show that some nations are “more equal than others.” Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy also said on Friday that accepting the ex-Soviet republic into both the EU and NATO would increase Washington’s sway over the EU dramatically. Kiev might also join NATO even sooner than the EU, Stefanishina proposed, saying that the US-led military bloc would be happy to have a member with “one of the strongest armies” after, she said, it beats Moscow. The minister admitted, though, that Ukraine’s accession to the alliance is a “political decision,” while still maintaining that this decision was “taken in Vilnius,” which hosted the latest NATO summit.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky produced a scandal at the meeting in mid-July, when he condemned NATO for what he called “indecisiveness” over a lack of a clear roadmap for Kiev’s membership. He allegedly angered US officials to the extent that they briefly considered withdrawing Ukraine’s invitation to the bloc. Then British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace also criticized Kiev over its lack of gratitude for Western military aid, explaining that the US and its allies were “not Amazon.”

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“I think that following Putin’s non-participation in this forum, our country’s exit from the organization is also possible. We must give preference to those platforms that can implement our projects and our ideas. BRICS can do this, the SCO can do this, but the G20 cannot ,” [Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee Andrei] Klimov said.

G20 Declaration On Ukraine A ‘Blow To Western Countries’ (Sp.)

The declaration of the G20 summit in India was a blow to the West, a British business newspaper reports, adding that this highlights the lack of global consensus in support of Kiev. The G20 leaders earlier in the day said in the New Delhi Summit Declaration that they had different views on and assessments of the Ukraine conflict during discussions of the issue, but all of them jointly call for respect for the UN Charter. “That statement, hammered out over weeks of negotiations between diplomats, is a blow to western countries that have spent the past year attempting to convince developing countries to condemn Moscow and support Ukraine,” the newspaper wrote. “The New Delhi summit declaration refers only to the ‘war in Ukraine’, a formulation that supporters of [Kiev] such as the US and NATO allies have previously rejected as it implies both sides are equally complicit,” the report added.

Russian G20 Sherpa Svetlana Lukash, meanwhile, emphasized that the declaration demonstrates the group’s balanced position on the Ukraine conflict and its intention to settle all conflicts around the world. “As for the Ukrainian case, I can say that the negotiations were very complex and, above all, the collective position of the BRICS countries and other partners has borne fruit … What we have been hearing all year, that the Ukrainian conflict is worsening the food security situation, is now reflected in a balanced way,” Lukash told journalists. Half of the group’s members refused to accept Western narratives, she said, adding that a “consensus language” had been used in the declaration. In addition, the G20 members have agreed to work jointly for peace, security, and conflict resolution around the world, Lukash said.

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“At the beginning of 2022 it was hovering around 25%, now it is exceeding 80%.”

Russia and China Have Effectively Ditched The Dollar – Moscow (RT)

The de-dollarization of Russia-China trade is practically complete, according to Georgy Zinoviev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s First Asian Department, as cited by RIA Novosti. The official said the share of the US dollar in mutual settlements between the neighboring nations has substantially shrunk over the past two years. “The share of national currencies in Russian-Chinese payments is growing at an extremely rapid pace,” Zinoviev told the news agency. “At the beginning of 2022 it was hovering around 25%, now it is exceeding 80%.” He added that the volume of trading in the ruble-yuan pair on the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) outpaced volumes in the dollar-ruble pair long ago. According to Zinoviev, Russian and Chinese businesses are “rapidly moving away from the ‘toxic’ Western currencies, opting for the ruble and yuan as more reliable and safe way of payment.”

The diplomat noted that Moscow and Beijing have developed vital tools to make it possible to “facilitate all necessary transactions as much as possible,” despite international political and economic instability that significantly affects financial institutions and their ability to efficiently operate. The changes reflect Russia’s move away from transactions in the currencies of ‘unfriendly countries’ against the backdrop of sanctions. Earlier this year, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the country no longer trusts the dollar, calling it “a completely unreliable instrument.” Zinoviev’s comments come ahead of the 8th Eastern Economic Forum, which kicks off on September 10 in Vladivostok, Russia. Most of the discussions at the annual event will focus on trade, business, and investment.

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“..In the short term — i.e., between now and the presidential election—prices would need to fall back to pre-Biden levels. The average US gas price in January 2021 when Biden took office was $2.42 per gallon. Now it’s $3.95..”

The Daunting Physics of ‘Bidenomics’ (Rall)

Democrats are confident enough about how things are going that “Bidenomics” is at the center of their case for another four years in the White House; however, this is a rosy picture few voters can see as Americans consistently give US President Joe Biden low marks for his handling of the economy. “I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, told US media. What gives? Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama White House, points to a yearslong trend that only ended recently: wages haven’t kept up with inflation, leaving the average worker $2,000 worse off than during the final year of the Trump presidency.

“The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Furman says. The problem for Biden is, what people would need to have happen in order to feel that inflation was truly behind them would be horrible for the economy – not to mention his prospects for reelection: deflation. During our lifetimes, ideal economic conditions in a healthy economy feature an annual official inflation rate in the single digits, a policy economists call inflation targeting. Prices rise, but if wages go up even faster employees are happy. Low inflation incentivizes consumers to buy sooner rather than later, when prices will be higher. But, as Furman points out, that hasn’t been the case lately. Airfares went up 28.5% in 2022. Butter rose 31.4%. Eggs a whopping 59.9%. So we’re displeased.

What will it take to convince voters that inflation is no longer a problem? In the short term — i.e., between now and the presidential election—prices would need to fall back to pre-Biden levels. The average US gas price in January 2021 when Biden took office was $2.42 per gallon. Now it’s $3.95. The Federal Reserve’s efforts to reduce inflation appear to be working. Prices are rising at a slower rate and that’s the problem for Democrats. Mechanical physics provides a helpful parallel. Many economists and political analysts seem to think of inflation rate as analogous to velocity. In their view, reducing the inflation rate from 8% to 3% is a victory for inflation-targeting fiscal policy. Indeed, if a 3% inflation rate (coupled with wages that rise faster than 3%) remains in effect indefinitely, people will eventually feel good (or less bad) about the economy. As the economist John Maynard Keynes observed a century ago, however, “in the long run, we will all be dead.” And the Democrats’ calendar is much shorter than that, a mere 14 months.

Before inflation-affected consumers can be persuaded to tap their feet to “Happy Days Are Here Again,” they’ll have to pass through several stages of recovery. First, they’ll feel less bad. Then comes meh. Penultimately, they’ll see themselves paying off credit card and other debts they ran up during the inflationary period. Only after those lingering financial hangovers are past will they be able to achieve what feels like the final stage, prosperity: earning enough to pay one’s bills while setting a surplus aside in the form of savings. With Americans’ credit card debt hitting the staggering benchmark of $1 trillion and rising, we are currently in the “less bad”/”meh” stage. But it’s hard to see what Biden or the Fed or anyone else can do in order to promote a sunnier view of the economy.

A lower inflation rate—even an ideal one in the low single digits—still means higher prices. We will probably not see $2.42 per gallon gas, the price in early 2021, any time soon, if ever. Gas prices will likely continue to increase to $4.00 and $4.05 and $4.10 and on and on and on, adding minor injury to gaping wound.

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“..So 2024 can’t come soon enough for most of us.”

World Is ‘Laughing At’ The US – Alaska Governor (RT)

The US government’s decision to cancel oil and gas drilling licenses and forbid further drilling will “hobble” the country’s economy and makes no sense except to advance the green agenda, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has declared. President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday canceled seven ten-year oil and gas drilling licenses granted to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) by former President Donald Trump. Biden’s Department of the Interior followed up this decision by issuing a proposal to forbid future leases on more than 40% of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

Biden said that these two measures “will help preserve our Arctic lands and wildlife,” adding on Saturday that he would “continue to take bold action to meet the urgency of the climate crisis and to protect our lands and waters for generations to come.” Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, Dunleavy said that “this makes absolutely no sense from any perspective unless your goal is to drive up the cost of oil and gas so much that it makes certain renewables cheaper.” Dunleavy, a Republican, claimed that Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are “laughing” at Biden’s energy policy. “They’re laughing together at the United States of America,” the governor said. “I can’t find anywhere in, really the history of nation-states or empires, where they worked at hobbling themselves to such a degree that’s happening currently with this administration. So 2024 can’t come soon enough for most of us.”

Gasoline prices have soared under Biden, reaching a record average high of just over $5 per gallon last June, up from around $2 when the president took office. Prices began to rise when Biden signed an executive order in January 2021 banning new oil and gas licenses on federal land, and spiked as the conflict in Ukraine rocked global energy markets. Ahead of last year’s midterm elections, Biden attempted to stabilize gasoline prices by draining the US’ strategic petroleum reserve, and by unsuccessfully lobbying the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting States to cut production. The AIDEA argues that Biden has no legal right to rescind existing drilling licenses and told Fox News that it intends to challenge the decision in court.

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“..Roughly 50% of price increases in the region resulted from local companies passing higher costs on to consumers..”

“..growth in corporate profits accounted for 45% of inflation in Europe last year..”

‘Greedflation’ Ravaging Western Europe – Nikkei (RT)

Inflation continues to rage in Western Europe, with monthly consumer prices soaring by over 14% in the UK and more than 10% in Germany, according to a Nikkei report. Some retailers have been hiking prices out of proportion with their underlying costs, it claimed. Roughly 50% of price increases in the region resulted from local companies passing higher costs on to consumers, the outlet estimated. Consumption has slumped across the region as price increases have outpaced wage growth. Nikkei cited an analysis of annual results from 70 European food retail and manufacturing companies by the management consultancy Oliver Wyman, which reportedly found that absolute EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) rose by 11% at food retailers and 12% at manufacturers in 2022, compared to the previous year. That growth was mostly driven by increased revenues.

“Companies in the food sector viewed the inflation context as an opportunity to review their price management,” Rainer Muench, partner at Oliver Wyman, was quoted as saying.

According to the IMF data, cited by Nikkei, growth in corporate profits accounted for 45% of inflation in Europe last year, higher than the 40% attributed to the higher cost of imports. A survey of households by the European Commission reportedly found the perceived rate of inflation over the past year has risen to 26% among low-income families, the highest in 20 years. Earlier this year, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey accused domestic retailers of driving ‘greedflation,’ claiming that certain businesses were “overcharging customers” as millions of families struggle to make ends meet. The BoE has also warned that British households and businesses need to accept that they are worse off and should stop asking for wage increases and pushing prices higher.

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“I’m running against a larger challenge because I am facing an entire infrastructure that is against me, from my own party and Big Tech and the pharmaceutical industry.“

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back (ET)

On a steamy summer morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode into a hotel conference room in Columbia, South Carolina, amid a barnstorming town hall tour of a state where Joe Biden won close to 49 percent of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary. Mr. Kennedy spoke about his 2024 presidential campaign. Democrat pundits say he is a fringe candidate who spreads conspiracy theories. Polls show him with the highest favorability rating of any presidential candidate. There is no path for Mr. Kennedy to defeat President Biden, critics claim, despite questions about President Joe Biden’s age and mental fitness, low approval ratings, and surveys showing that Americans are concerned about the economy. Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee voted to give its full support to the president.

Mr. Kennedy agrees that unseating an incumbent president in the same party is a daunting challenge but disagrees with doubters who say he has no chance of securing the nomination. The 2024 presidential nominee will be announced during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next summer. Until then, Mr. Kennedy intends to continue to press his case. “The DNC has around $2 billion, and they’re spending that money generously to try to marginalize me in many ways, but I think most Democrats care about one thing more than anything else, which is to beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times. “I think President Biden cannot do that. I can.” Mr. Kennedy is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963; and the son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was shot and killed after a campaign speech while running for president in 1968.

During his town halls and meet-and-greets, Mr. Kennedy tells stories from time spent with his uncle and father and connects them to his presidential campaign. He wants to continue his father’s legacy of uniting Americans from all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds. “I think we do that by telling the truth to people. My dad did it that way. He talked about uncomfortable issues but talked about the truth. I think people are tired of being lied to by the government, by the media,” Mr. Kennedy said. “My dad ran against an incumbent president in his own party (Lyndon B. Johnson) during a divisive time. I’m running against a larger challenge because I am facing an entire infrastructure that is against me, from my own party and Big Tech and the pharmaceutical industry.”

RFK

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“..because I refused to lie about President Trump it cost me twenty-two years of my life.”

Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Drops Bombshell (GP)

“They asked me to LIE about President Trump in order to indict him,” Enrique Tarrio exclusively told the Gateway Pundit. “I told them to pound sand, and because I refused to lie about President Trump it cost me twenty-two years of my life.” “The truth is, I could have been home,” said Tarrio. “I could have been home a long time ago. I could be in my warm ass bed right now, laughing at the world, without a problem…and all I had to do in order to do that WAS LIE ABOUT TRUMP. All I had to do was confirm a lie.” Tarrio opened up to the Gateway Pundit after he was sentenced to decades in prison by the Dishonorable Judge Kelly on Tuesday.

He told us that the prosecutors in the Department of Justice attempted to coerce him into signing a false statement that would implicate President Trump by swearing that “through several degrees of separation and connections, Tarrio had communicated with Trump regarding ‘plans’ for January 6th.” On Friday night The Gateway Pundit held a Twitter space with Enrique Tarrio as special guest. TGP reporters Cara Castronuova and Alicia Powe organized Friday night’s Twitter Space. During Friday night’s Twitter Space Enrique Tarrio repeated his accusations against the Biden regime. Later in the discussion Enrique disclosed two names of Biden officials who were in the meeting when he was pressured by federal agents to lie about President Trump.

Enrique Tarrio announced two DOJ officials who were in the room during this meeting: ** DOJ Lead Prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine ** Assistant US Attorney Jason McCullough Jocelyn Ballantine was a DOJ attorney staffed on General Michael Flynn’s prosecution. The DOJ admitted to altering evidence in Flynn’s case and the government eventually dropped the case against General Flynn. Ballantine was caught lying during a DOJ investigation of Strzok and McCabe. She still holds a job as a top official in Merrick Garland’s DOJ.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1700542330682347608

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No, not “climate change”. Tourism. In Athens, numbers of visitors to the Acropolis are being limited. New York City is severely cutting into AirBnB rentals.

Japan’s Mount Fuji ‘In Real Crisis’ – Officials (RT)

Mount Fuji, one of Japan’s sacred mountains and a popular pilgrimage site, could become less attractive if the number of tourists is not brought under control, the local authorities warn. “Fuji is screaming in pain. We can’t just wait for improvement,” Masatake Izumi, a Yamanashi prefectural government official, told CNN during a tour for foreign media on Saturday, adding that “overtourism” needs to be tackled urgently. Izumi was quoted by Reuters as saying that “Fuji faces a real crisis” because of the “uncontrollable” flow of tourists. “We fear that Mount Fuji will soon become so unattractive, nobody would want to climb it,” he said.

According to government officials, the post-Covid tourism boom has brought thousands of hikers to the mountain, causing environmental damage and placing extra pressure on the first aid services. Despite the introduction of a campaign urging visitors not to litter, with volunteers removing tons of trash each year, both hikers and caretakers complain about overcrowding and the piles of litter left along the path. Mount Fuji ranger Miho Sakurai told reporters that there are “way too many people on Mount Fuji at the moment,” including many inexperienced “first timers,” often underdressed, poorly equipped, and prone to hypothermia or altitude sickness. As a result, rescue requests have increased by 50% from last year and one person died in April in a climbing accident.

An active volcano known for its picturesque snowcap and one of Japan’s national symbols, the mountain was recognized as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 2013. The number of visitors to Fuji more than doubled between 2012 and 2019 to 5.1 million, according to CNA news agency. This week, government officials met to discuss “overcrowding and breaches of etiquette” across high-traffic tourist spots, with Yamanashi Governor Kotaro Nagasaki proposing the construction of a light railway to control the number of people accessing the site. “We need a shift from quantity to quality when it comes to tourism on Mount Fuji,” Nagasaki said. A local ranger called the prospect of Mount Fuji losing its heritage status “devastating.”

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Kids having fun
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700240513838760320

 

 

Water filters are now labeled “pesticides” (because they contain silver).

 

 

Elephants
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700575172858675668

 

 

Tuna

 

 

CGI

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 


Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Fall of Icarus 1558

 

Wrongheaded US Leadership in Ukraine – Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Nap (Sp.)
Ice Cracking Sounds On Frozen Lake of US-Russia Relations (Bhadrakumar)
Musk Talked To Russian Ambassador Before Starlink Decision – WaPo (RT)
Musk: US Military Vulnerability Due to Slow Production Rate, Like Ukraine (Sp.)
NATO’s DU ‘Perfect Storm’ of Toxic Pollution in Breadbasket Ukraine (Tweedie)
Biden Admin Likely Violated 1st Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit (ZH)
Ukraine Will Be Ready To Join EU In Two Years – Kiev (RT)
G20 Declaration On Ukraine A ‘Blow To Western Countries’ (Sp.)
Russia and China Have Effectively Ditched The Dollar – Moscow (RT)
The Daunting Physics of ‘Bidenomics’ (Rall)
World Is ‘Laughing At’ The US – Alaska Governor (RT)
‘Greedflation’ Ravaging Western Europe – Nikkei (RT)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back (ET)
Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Drops Bombshell (GP)
Japan’s Mount Fuji ‘In Real Crisis’ – Officials (RT)

 

 

Japan vaccine

 

 

 

 

Hoax

 

 

 

 

Obama Minimize
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700313493428228549

 

 

 

 

DARPA McCullough

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent conversation.

“Tony, look at a map,” and just look at the progress that “has not been made by Ukraine..”

Wrongheaded US Leadership in Ukraine – Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Nap (Sp.)

The United States is blatantly lying about the botched Ukrainian counteroffensive, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said in an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano on his Judging Freedom podcast. “Tony, look at a map,” and just look at the progress that “has not been made by Ukraine,” said the retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, as he commented on recent remarks made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kiev. During his unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital, Blinken, standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, touted that the Ukrainian military had made “real progress” in its counteroffensive in the “last few weeks.” The Ukrainian president’s assessment of the battlefront developments “matches our own,” continued Blinken, who went over to Kiev to pledge a new aid package for Ukraine worth over $1 billion.

In fact, “Russia has been steadily pushing to the [west],” Johnson said, pointing out that the battle of Artemovsk was the “last big conflict” on the battlefront that Ukraine’s military was engaged in. “They [the US] don’t understand Russian defensive tactics,” Johnson emphasized. In May 2023, the Russian military liberated Artemovsk (also known as Bakhmut), a Donbass city reduced to ruins in over eight months of brutal house-to-house fighting. The Artemovsk operation destroyed tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops and foreign mercenaries, while Russia built up its reserves and prepared defenses in Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson for Kiev’s much-heralded summer offensive

“Americans have been had,” added Ray McGovern, a former top US intel analyst, who also joined the Judging Freedom podcast. He pointed out that, “Billions of money had gone to Ukraine, with a lot of it syphoned off.” He told the host that America was “losing” in the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Nevertheless, senior-level members of the US intelligence community continue “to delude themselves, their colleagues, the press, and the public,” regarding the actual developments on the ground, specified Larry Johnson. These officials refused to wake up to the reality that Ukraine was experiencing “shortage of ammunition, shortage of manpower, trouble recruiting people,” etc.

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“What distinguishes Umerov is that he was a key negotiator at the peace talks with Russia in Istanbul last year in March, which actually resulted in an agreed document … Again, he was instrumental in negotiating the Black Sea Grain Initiative..”

Ice Cracking Sounds On Frozen Lake of US-Russia Relations (Bhadrakumar)

Meanwhile, on September 6, Blinken embarked on quite an untypical visit to Kiev. There was no fire in his belly. For once, he didn’t threaten Russia or ridicule Putin from Ukrainian soil. Nor did Blinken show much enthusiasm for Kiev’s counteroffensive. Rather, his focus was on the war’s horrific trail causing human suffering, Ukraine’s post-conflict recovery as a democracy and its economy’s reconstruction. Blinken said repeatedly that he was undertaking the visit on Biden’s instruction. In the presence of President Zelensky, Blinken stated:

“We are determined in the United States to continue to walk side by side with you. And President Biden asked me to come, to reaffirm strongly our support, to ensure that we are maximising the efforts that we’re making and other countries are making for the immediate challenge of the counteroffensive as well as the longer-term efforts to help Ukraine build a force for the future that can deter and defend against any future aggression, but also to work with you and support you as you engage in the critical work of strengthening your democracy, rebuilding your economy.”

Stirring words, but there was no boastful talk of liberating Crimea, carrying the fight into the Russian camp or forcing Russia to vacate the annexed territories and negotiating with Russia only from a position of strength. At Blinken’s joint press availability with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, the latter claimed that they had a “substantive” discussion on providing long-range rockets, ATACMS to Kiev. But Blinken sidestepped the topic. The most unusual thing about Blinken’s visit was that it spilled over to a second day. This must be the first time Blinken spent a night in Ukraine. Blinken had a rather tight schedule on the first day meeting Kuleba, Zelensky and Prime Minister Denis Shmigal, but the itinerary for the second day [September 7], was left open. Obviously, he came to Kiev for some serious discussions.

Conceivably, Biden could be interested in starting peace talks between Moscow and Kiev now that the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed to meet its politico-military objectives, and there are worrisome signs of support waning in America and Europe for the proxy war, while a Russian offensive could deal a knockout punch on Ukraine’s military. Both Russian and western estimates are that close to 65-70,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in these past 3 months alone since Kiev’s “counteroffensive” began. Meanwhile, in an interesting coincidence, on September 6, Ukraine’s parliament Verkhovna Rada approved the appointment of Rustem Umerov as the new Defence Minister replacing Alexei Reznikov. A Crimean Tatar born in Uzbekistan (USSR), Umerov has no previous military background. But he is trusted by Zelensky and is acceptable to the Americans.

What distinguishes Umerov is that he was a key negotiator at the peace talks with Russia in Istanbul last year in March, which actually resulted in an agreed document (from which Zelensky subsequently retracted under Anglo-American pressure.) Again, he was instrumental in negotiating the Black Sea Grain Initiative (so-called grain deal between Ukraine and Russia) which became operational in July last year at Istanbul. These are straws in the wind that must be duly noted.

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Even RT gets it upside down: “..secretly instructed engineers to turn off coverage..” No, he did not. There was never any coverage to be shut down. He declined to activate it.

Musk Talked To Russian Ambassador Before Starlink Decision – WaPo (RT)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke to Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, before making the decision to switch off his Starlink satellite internet service in Crimea last September to thwart a Ukrainian attack on the peninsula, the Washington Post has reported. On Thursday, the paper published more details about Musk cutting Starlink coverage to prevent a Ukrainian seaborne drone strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol. The events that occurred have been described in a biography of the tech billionaire by historian Walter Isaacson that is due to hit shelves next week. With Kiev’s forces poised to launch their attack, Musk spoke with Antonov, who told him that a strike on Crimea, which became part of Russia after a referendum in 2014, “could lead to a nuclear response” by Moscow, Isaacson said in his book.

“In later conversations with a few other people, he [Musk] seemed to imply that he had spoken directly to [Russian] President Vladimir Putin, but to me he said his communications had gone through the ambassador,” the historian wrote. According to Isaacson, Musk concluded that “allowing the use of Starlink for the attack… could be a disaster for the world.” He therefore took matters into his own hands and secretly instructed engineers to turn off coverage within 100km of the Crimean coast. As a result of the move, the six explosive-laden Ukrainian drones, which relied on Starlink for navigation, “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.” Musk started receiving “frantic” calls from Kiev as soon as the Ukrainians realized that the satellite service wasn’t working.

They tried to explain to the billionaire that the drones were “crucial to their fight for freedom,” but Musk still refused to switch Starlink back on. He argued that Ukraine was “going too far and inviting strategic defeat” by targeting Crimea, Isaacson wrote. The historian also claimed that Musk had discussed the situation with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, explaining to them that he didn’t intend for Starlink to be used for offensive purposes. Musk provided a slightly different account of events in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), saying that Starlink was never active around Crimea and that he simply turned down Ukrainian calls to provide coverage in the area.

“If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he argued. Commenting on revelations from Isaacson’s book, Mikhail Podoliak, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, said that Musk’s decision was the result of “a cocktail of ignorance and big ego.” The billionaire “committed evil” by allowing the Russian fleet to continue striking Ukrainian targets with Kalibr missiles, he claimed. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy head of the country’s Security Council, described Musk as “the last adequate mind in North America” for preventing a strike on Crimea.

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It’s going to take many years.

Musk: US Military Vulnerability Due to Slow Production Rate, Like Ukraine (Sp.)

US military vulnerability primarily “stems from the slow pace of production,” American entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk has pointed out. The tech guru took to his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), to comment on last year’s post by the company Anduril Industries. On its five-year anniversary, the military technology company had argued the need for a joint effort if it was expected to “transform US and allied military capabilities with advanced technology.” We need “a new group of defense technology companies to Reboot the Arsenal of Democracy,” the firm had stated. The entrepreneur also emphasized that making new prototypes is easy, but putting them into production is hard.

This comes as the third month of Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive has wrapped up, with the Kiev regime unable to boast any significant military gains, while US stockpiles of munitions are getting “dangerously low”. As of August 30, 2023, Ukraine has reportedly lost 466 airplanes, 247 helicopters, 6,234 unmanned aerial vehicles, 433 air defense missile systems, 11,570 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, 1,146 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 6,128 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 12,528 special military motor vehicles since the beginning of the special military operation.

Meanwhile, the US unveiled the latest military package for the Kiev regime, worth $250 million, late in August, including AIM-9M missiles for air defense, munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition, mine-clearing equipment, Javelin and other anti-armor systems and rockets, three million rounds of small arms ammunition, as well as other items. However, by continuing to funnel military aid to Kiev the US is reportedly fast-depleting its own military caches of various weapons. Thus, depletion of US stockpiles of 155mm artillery shells (for howitzer use) was recently cited in a US report, with the additional revelation that Washington was sending Kiev 155mm and 105mm shells for the simple reason that it no longer had adequate stockpiles of 155mm shells.

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“..high-level radioactive waste contaminants can be found in uranium waste streams that then get made into depleted uranium.”

NATO’s DU ‘Perfect Storm’ of Toxic Pollution in Breadbasket Ukraine (Tweedie)

NATO-supplied depleted uranium (DU) rounds will contaminate Ukraine’s ‘breadbasket’ grain-growing regions with radioactive waste, a nuclear watchdog has warned. This week the US followed the UK in announcing the supply of the controversial armor-piercing rounds for the M1 Abrams tanks it is supplying to the Kiev regime. British Challenger 2 tanks equipped with DU penetrators have already seen action in the Zaporozye region — with at least one meeting a fiery end. Depleted uranium is the left-over material from the enrichment process used to make fuel rods for nuclear power reactors and — at higher levels — elements of nuclear weapons. The concentration of fissile uranium-235 isotope in depleted uranium is about 0.3 percent, 40 percent of the level of element in its unenriched state, but it still emits around 60 percent as much atomic radiation as natural uranium.

Most of that is in the form of alpha particles from U-238 and U-234 — the most harmful form of radiation if ingested into the body — with beta particles given out by decay products that form within a few weeks. Watchdog Kevin Kamps told Sputnik that US national security spokesman John Kirby’s claim that DU penetrator rods were not radioactive or carcinogenic was simply not true. “Depleted uranium munitions are really intended to be armor piercing. They can bust tanks, they can penetrate through concrete,” Kamps explained. “It’s because they’re so dense. Uranium is the densest isotope an element on the periodic table.” The harmful nature of DU is well understood, the expert pointed out. “Uranium in nature is hazardous to begin with,” Kamps said. “It’s a toxic heavy metal. It is what they say as mildly radioactive, which is kind of a misnomer, radioactivity is hazardous even in mild form.”

He added that DU is often mixed with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. “In both the United States, where this depleted uranium munitions is coming from, but also in other countries, there’s a mixing of uranium waste streams off of the enrichment process,” Kamps noted. “And what that can often mean is high-level radioactive waste contaminants can be found in uranium waste streams that then get made into depleted uranium.” What makes DU even more toxic is its pyrophoric properties — the material ignites on hitting its target, as well as pulverizing into microscopic dust from the near-hypersonic velocity impact. “It’s kind of the perfect storm of hazard. You’ve got toxic heavy metal, you’ve got radioactivity that can be contaminated with much higher level radioactivity from high-level radioactive waste,” Kamps stressed. “And then it turns into a fine dust that you can breathe in, that blows on the wind, that settles on the water and flows downstream and downwind and harms people and other living beings all along the way.”

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I posted Justin Hart’s tweet yesterday, with a long list of officials affected by the decision. Will they stop?

Biden Admin Likely Violated 1st Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit (ZH)

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that several Biden administration officials had likely breached the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to moderate or take down content they deemed problematic. And here is Exhibit A of that First Amendment-crushing coercion and collusion… which obviously began in the Trump-era under Anthony Fauci. ZeroHedge was banned from Twitter one day after this email. In an unsigned 75-page opinion, three 5th Circuit judges agreed with the plaintiffs that the administration “ran afoul of the First Amendment” by at times threatening social media platforms with antitrust action or changes to law protecting them from liability.

However, as The Epoch Times’ Aldgra Fredly reports, the three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed much of an injunction issued by a Louisiana judge that restricted Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration from communicating with social media companies. The court said that the White House, Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI “likely coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment. “It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with social media companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference,” the three-judge panel said in a 74-page ruling (pdf) on Sept. 8. “But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression,” they added.

The court found that the officials made “express threats” and “inflammatory accusations” by saying that the platforms were “poisoning the public” and “killing people.” The platforms were told they needed to take “greater responsibility and action.” “Then, they followed their statements with threats of ‘fundamental reforms’ like regulatory changes and increased enforcement actions that would ensure the platforms were ‘held accountable’. But, beyond express threats, there was always an unspoken ‘or else,'” it added. The court also said the officials encouraged social media platforms to moderate content by “exercising active, meaningful control over those decisions,” particularly concerning the platforms’ moderation policies.

According to the ruling, the FBI “regularly met with the platforms, shared ‘strategic information,’ frequently alerted the social media companies to misinformation spreading on their platforms, and monitored their content moderation policies.” “But, the FBI went beyond that—they urged the platforms to take down content. Turning to the Second Circuit’s four-factor test, we find that those requests were coercive,” it added. The judges emphasized that the government cannot supervise a platform’s content moderation decisions and cannot impose “legal, regulatory, or economic consequences” if they refuse to comply with a given request. “Social media platforms’ content-moderation decisions must be theirs and theirs alone,” the court asserted.

The attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, along with several social media users, had sued last year, saying Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter engaged in censorship as a result of repeated urging by government officials and threats of heightened regulatory enforcement. The lawsuit said the censored views included content questioning anti-COVID-19 measures such as masks and vaccine mandates and allegations of election fraud.

Watters 5th circuit

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Not going to happen.

Ukraine Will Be Ready To Join EU In Two Years – Kiev (RT)

Ukraine should be ready to become an EU member in the next two years, Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishina told Voice of America on Friday. As Kiev’s official responsible for “European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” she says her nation is one of the “best prepared” for such a step. “I believe that two years would be enough for full preparedness,” Stefanishina said, when asked about Ukraine’s EU prospects. She also vowed to do “10 times more than we do now” to achieve the goal once the conflict with Moscow ends. However, the minister admitted that the timeline would ultimately be determined by the “course of war.”

According to Stefanishina, Ukraine remains one of the “best prepared [nations] for the EU accession” since it is “a big part of the European economy” even in the midst of armed conflict. The country is one of the EU’s “top 20” import partners and the Ukrainian domestic market is “the biggest” on the territory of Europe, she stated. At the same time, she admitted that Ukraine’s economic role in the EU would remain largely agricultural. “With all those agricultural lands… there can be no reality, in which Ukraine stops being an agrarian country,” she said. The bloc itself has been in no rush to accept Kiev into its ranks. EU officials have refused to set specific timelines for Ukraine’s accession, saying that it must first address issues such as rampant corruption and introduce comprehensive legal reforms. In 2022, France said that the process might eventually take years.

In early September, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg warned that fast-tracking membership for Ukraine would spell “geostrategic disaster” since it would show that some nations are “more equal than others.” Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy also said on Friday that accepting the ex-Soviet republic into both the EU and NATO would increase Washington’s sway over the EU dramatically. Kiev might also join NATO even sooner than the EU, Stefanishina proposed, saying that the US-led military bloc would be happy to have a member with “one of the strongest armies” after, she said, it beats Moscow. The minister admitted, though, that Ukraine’s accession to the alliance is a “political decision,” while still maintaining that this decision was “taken in Vilnius,” which hosted the latest NATO summit.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky produced a scandal at the meeting in mid-July, when he condemned NATO for what he called “indecisiveness” over a lack of a clear roadmap for Kiev’s membership. He allegedly angered US officials to the extent that they briefly considered withdrawing Ukraine’s invitation to the bloc. Then British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace also criticized Kiev over its lack of gratitude for Western military aid, explaining that the US and its allies were “not Amazon.”

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“I think that following Putin’s non-participation in this forum, our country’s exit from the organization is also possible. We must give preference to those platforms that can implement our projects and our ideas. BRICS can do this, the SCO can do this, but the G20 cannot ,” [Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee Andrei] Klimov said.

G20 Declaration On Ukraine A ‘Blow To Western Countries’ (Sp.)

The declaration of the G20 summit in India was a blow to the West, a British business newspaper reports, adding that this highlights the lack of global consensus in support of Kiev. The G20 leaders earlier in the day said in the New Delhi Summit Declaration that they had different views on and assessments of the Ukraine conflict during discussions of the issue, but all of them jointly call for respect for the UN Charter. “That statement, hammered out over weeks of negotiations between diplomats, is a blow to western countries that have spent the past year attempting to convince developing countries to condemn Moscow and support Ukraine,” the newspaper wrote. “The New Delhi summit declaration refers only to the ‘war in Ukraine’, a formulation that supporters of [Kiev] such as the US and NATO allies have previously rejected as it implies both sides are equally complicit,” the report added.

Russian G20 Sherpa Svetlana Lukash, meanwhile, emphasized that the declaration demonstrates the group’s balanced position on the Ukraine conflict and its intention to settle all conflicts around the world. “As for the Ukrainian case, I can say that the negotiations were very complex and, above all, the collective position of the BRICS countries and other partners has borne fruit … What we have been hearing all year, that the Ukrainian conflict is worsening the food security situation, is now reflected in a balanced way,” Lukash told journalists. Half of the group’s members refused to accept Western narratives, she said, adding that a “consensus language” had been used in the declaration. In addition, the G20 members have agreed to work jointly for peace, security, and conflict resolution around the world, Lukash said.

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“At the beginning of 2022 it was hovering around 25%, now it is exceeding 80%.”

Russia and China Have Effectively Ditched The Dollar – Moscow (RT)

The de-dollarization of Russia-China trade is practically complete, according to Georgy Zinoviev, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s First Asian Department, as cited by RIA Novosti. The official said the share of the US dollar in mutual settlements between the neighboring nations has substantially shrunk over the past two years. “The share of national currencies in Russian-Chinese payments is growing at an extremely rapid pace,” Zinoviev told the news agency. “At the beginning of 2022 it was hovering around 25%, now it is exceeding 80%.” He added that the volume of trading in the ruble-yuan pair on the Moscow Exchange (MOEX) outpaced volumes in the dollar-ruble pair long ago. According to Zinoviev, Russian and Chinese businesses are “rapidly moving away from the ‘toxic’ Western currencies, opting for the ruble and yuan as more reliable and safe way of payment.”

The diplomat noted that Moscow and Beijing have developed vital tools to make it possible to “facilitate all necessary transactions as much as possible,” despite international political and economic instability that significantly affects financial institutions and their ability to efficiently operate. The changes reflect Russia’s move away from transactions in the currencies of ‘unfriendly countries’ against the backdrop of sanctions. Earlier this year, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said the country no longer trusts the dollar, calling it “a completely unreliable instrument.” Zinoviev’s comments come ahead of the 8th Eastern Economic Forum, which kicks off on September 10 in Vladivostok, Russia. Most of the discussions at the annual event will focus on trade, business, and investment.

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“..In the short term — i.e., between now and the presidential election—prices would need to fall back to pre-Biden levels. The average US gas price in January 2021 when Biden took office was $2.42 per gallon. Now it’s $3.95..”

The Daunting Physics of ‘Bidenomics’ (Rall)

Democrats are confident enough about how things are going that “Bidenomics” is at the center of their case for another four years in the White House; however, this is a rosy picture few voters can see as Americans consistently give US President Joe Biden low marks for his handling of the economy. “I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, told US media. What gives? Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under the Obama White House, points to a yearslong trend that only ended recently: wages haven’t kept up with inflation, leaving the average worker $2,000 worse off than during the final year of the Trump presidency.

“The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Furman says. The problem for Biden is, what people would need to have happen in order to feel that inflation was truly behind them would be horrible for the economy – not to mention his prospects for reelection: deflation. During our lifetimes, ideal economic conditions in a healthy economy feature an annual official inflation rate in the single digits, a policy economists call inflation targeting. Prices rise, but if wages go up even faster employees are happy. Low inflation incentivizes consumers to buy sooner rather than later, when prices will be higher. But, as Furman points out, that hasn’t been the case lately. Airfares went up 28.5% in 2022. Butter rose 31.4%. Eggs a whopping 59.9%. So we’re displeased.

What will it take to convince voters that inflation is no longer a problem? In the short term — i.e., between now and the presidential election—prices would need to fall back to pre-Biden levels. The average US gas price in January 2021 when Biden took office was $2.42 per gallon. Now it’s $3.95. The Federal Reserve’s efforts to reduce inflation appear to be working. Prices are rising at a slower rate and that’s the problem for Democrats. Mechanical physics provides a helpful parallel. Many economists and political analysts seem to think of inflation rate as analogous to velocity. In their view, reducing the inflation rate from 8% to 3% is a victory for inflation-targeting fiscal policy. Indeed, if a 3% inflation rate (coupled with wages that rise faster than 3%) remains in effect indefinitely, people will eventually feel good (or less bad) about the economy. As the economist John Maynard Keynes observed a century ago, however, “in the long run, we will all be dead.” And the Democrats’ calendar is much shorter than that, a mere 14 months.

Before inflation-affected consumers can be persuaded to tap their feet to “Happy Days Are Here Again,” they’ll have to pass through several stages of recovery. First, they’ll feel less bad. Then comes meh. Penultimately, they’ll see themselves paying off credit card and other debts they ran up during the inflationary period. Only after those lingering financial hangovers are past will they be able to achieve what feels like the final stage, prosperity: earning enough to pay one’s bills while setting a surplus aside in the form of savings. With Americans’ credit card debt hitting the staggering benchmark of $1 trillion and rising, we are currently in the “less bad”/”meh” stage. But it’s hard to see what Biden or the Fed or anyone else can do in order to promote a sunnier view of the economy.

A lower inflation rate—even an ideal one in the low single digits—still means higher prices. We will probably not see $2.42 per gallon gas, the price in early 2021, any time soon, if ever. Gas prices will likely continue to increase to $4.00 and $4.05 and $4.10 and on and on and on, adding minor injury to gaping wound.

Read more …

“..So 2024 can’t come soon enough for most of us.”

World Is ‘Laughing At’ The US – Alaska Governor (RT)

The US government’s decision to cancel oil and gas drilling licenses and forbid further drilling will “hobble” the country’s economy and makes no sense except to advance the green agenda, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has declared. President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday canceled seven ten-year oil and gas drilling licenses granted to the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) by former President Donald Trump. Biden’s Department of the Interior followed up this decision by issuing a proposal to forbid future leases on more than 40% of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

Biden said that these two measures “will help preserve our Arctic lands and wildlife,” adding on Saturday that he would “continue to take bold action to meet the urgency of the climate crisis and to protect our lands and waters for generations to come.” Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, Dunleavy said that “this makes absolutely no sense from any perspective unless your goal is to drive up the cost of oil and gas so much that it makes certain renewables cheaper.” Dunleavy, a Republican, claimed that Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are “laughing” at Biden’s energy policy. “They’re laughing together at the United States of America,” the governor said. “I can’t find anywhere in, really the history of nation-states or empires, where they worked at hobbling themselves to such a degree that’s happening currently with this administration. So 2024 can’t come soon enough for most of us.”

Gasoline prices have soared under Biden, reaching a record average high of just over $5 per gallon last June, up from around $2 when the president took office. Prices began to rise when Biden signed an executive order in January 2021 banning new oil and gas licenses on federal land, and spiked as the conflict in Ukraine rocked global energy markets. Ahead of last year’s midterm elections, Biden attempted to stabilize gasoline prices by draining the US’ strategic petroleum reserve, and by unsuccessfully lobbying the Saudi-led Organization of Petroleum Exporting States to cut production. The AIDEA argues that Biden has no legal right to rescind existing drilling licenses and told Fox News that it intends to challenge the decision in court.

Read more …

“..Roughly 50% of price increases in the region resulted from local companies passing higher costs on to consumers..”

“..growth in corporate profits accounted for 45% of inflation in Europe last year..”

‘Greedflation’ Ravaging Western Europe – Nikkei (RT)

Inflation continues to rage in Western Europe, with monthly consumer prices soaring by over 14% in the UK and more than 10% in Germany, according to a Nikkei report. Some retailers have been hiking prices out of proportion with their underlying costs, it claimed. Roughly 50% of price increases in the region resulted from local companies passing higher costs on to consumers, the outlet estimated. Consumption has slumped across the region as price increases have outpaced wage growth. Nikkei cited an analysis of annual results from 70 European food retail and manufacturing companies by the management consultancy Oliver Wyman, which reportedly found that absolute EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) rose by 11% at food retailers and 12% at manufacturers in 2022, compared to the previous year. That growth was mostly driven by increased revenues.

“Companies in the food sector viewed the inflation context as an opportunity to review their price management,” Rainer Muench, partner at Oliver Wyman, was quoted as saying.

According to the IMF data, cited by Nikkei, growth in corporate profits accounted for 45% of inflation in Europe last year, higher than the 40% attributed to the higher cost of imports. A survey of households by the European Commission reportedly found the perceived rate of inflation over the past year has risen to 26% among low-income families, the highest in 20 years. Earlier this year, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey accused domestic retailers of driving ‘greedflation,’ claiming that certain businesses were “overcharging customers” as millions of families struggle to make ends meet. The BoE has also warned that British households and businesses need to accept that they are worse off and should stop asking for wage increases and pushing prices higher.

Read more …

“I’m running against a larger challenge because I am facing an entire infrastructure that is against me, from my own party and Big Tech and the pharmaceutical industry.“

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back (ET)

On a steamy summer morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. strode into a hotel conference room in Columbia, South Carolina, amid a barnstorming town hall tour of a state where Joe Biden won close to 49 percent of the vote in the 2020 Democratic primary. Mr. Kennedy spoke about his 2024 presidential campaign. Democrat pundits say he is a fringe candidate who spreads conspiracy theories. Polls show him with the highest favorability rating of any presidential candidate. There is no path for Mr. Kennedy to defeat President Biden, critics claim, despite questions about President Joe Biden’s age and mental fitness, low approval ratings, and surveys showing that Americans are concerned about the economy. Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee voted to give its full support to the president.

Mr. Kennedy agrees that unseating an incumbent president in the same party is a daunting challenge but disagrees with doubters who say he has no chance of securing the nomination. The 2024 presidential nominee will be announced during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next summer. Until then, Mr. Kennedy intends to continue to press his case. “The DNC has around $2 billion, and they’re spending that money generously to try to marginalize me in many ways, but I think most Democrats care about one thing more than anything else, which is to beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times. “I think President Biden cannot do that. I can.” Mr. Kennedy is the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963; and the son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was shot and killed after a campaign speech while running for president in 1968.

During his town halls and meet-and-greets, Mr. Kennedy tells stories from time spent with his uncle and father and connects them to his presidential campaign. He wants to continue his father’s legacy of uniting Americans from all economic classes and ethnic backgrounds. “I think we do that by telling the truth to people. My dad did it that way. He talked about uncomfortable issues but talked about the truth. I think people are tired of being lied to by the government, by the media,” Mr. Kennedy said. “My dad ran against an incumbent president in his own party (Lyndon B. Johnson) during a divisive time. I’m running against a larger challenge because I am facing an entire infrastructure that is against me, from my own party and Big Tech and the pharmaceutical industry.”

RFK

Read more …

“..because I refused to lie about President Trump it cost me twenty-two years of my life.”

Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Drops Bombshell (GP)

“They asked me to LIE about President Trump in order to indict him,” Enrique Tarrio exclusively told the Gateway Pundit. “I told them to pound sand, and because I refused to lie about President Trump it cost me twenty-two years of my life.” “The truth is, I could have been home,” said Tarrio. “I could have been home a long time ago. I could be in my warm ass bed right now, laughing at the world, without a problem…and all I had to do in order to do that WAS LIE ABOUT TRUMP. All I had to do was confirm a lie.” Tarrio opened up to the Gateway Pundit after he was sentenced to decades in prison by the Dishonorable Judge Kelly on Tuesday.

He told us that the prosecutors in the Department of Justice attempted to coerce him into signing a false statement that would implicate President Trump by swearing that “through several degrees of separation and connections, Tarrio had communicated with Trump regarding ‘plans’ for January 6th.” On Friday night The Gateway Pundit held a Twitter space with Enrique Tarrio as special guest. TGP reporters Cara Castronuova and Alicia Powe organized Friday night’s Twitter Space. During Friday night’s Twitter Space Enrique Tarrio repeated his accusations against the Biden regime. Later in the discussion Enrique disclosed two names of Biden officials who were in the meeting when he was pressured by federal agents to lie about President Trump.

Enrique Tarrio announced two DOJ officials who were in the room during this meeting: ** DOJ Lead Prosecutor Jocelyn Ballantine ** Assistant US Attorney Jason McCullough Jocelyn Ballantine was a DOJ attorney staffed on General Michael Flynn’s prosecution. The DOJ admitted to altering evidence in Flynn’s case and the government eventually dropped the case against General Flynn. Ballantine was caught lying during a DOJ investigation of Strzok and McCabe. She still holds a job as a top official in Merrick Garland’s DOJ.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1700542330682347608

Read more …

No, not “climate change”. Tourism. In Athens, numbers of visitors to the Acropolis are being limited. New York City is severely cutting into AirBnB rentals.

Japan’s Mount Fuji ‘In Real Crisis’ – Officials (RT)

Mount Fuji, one of Japan’s sacred mountains and a popular pilgrimage site, could become less attractive if the number of tourists is not brought under control, the local authorities warn. “Fuji is screaming in pain. We can’t just wait for improvement,” Masatake Izumi, a Yamanashi prefectural government official, told CNN during a tour for foreign media on Saturday, adding that “overtourism” needs to be tackled urgently. Izumi was quoted by Reuters as saying that “Fuji faces a real crisis” because of the “uncontrollable” flow of tourists. “We fear that Mount Fuji will soon become so unattractive, nobody would want to climb it,” he said.

According to government officials, the post-Covid tourism boom has brought thousands of hikers to the mountain, causing environmental damage and placing extra pressure on the first aid services. Despite the introduction of a campaign urging visitors not to litter, with volunteers removing tons of trash each year, both hikers and caretakers complain about overcrowding and the piles of litter left along the path. Mount Fuji ranger Miho Sakurai told reporters that there are “way too many people on Mount Fuji at the moment,” including many inexperienced “first timers,” often underdressed, poorly equipped, and prone to hypothermia or altitude sickness. As a result, rescue requests have increased by 50% from last year and one person died in April in a climbing accident.

An active volcano known for its picturesque snowcap and one of Japan’s national symbols, the mountain was recognized as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 2013. The number of visitors to Fuji more than doubled between 2012 and 2019 to 5.1 million, according to CNA news agency. This week, government officials met to discuss “overcrowding and breaches of etiquette” across high-traffic tourist spots, with Yamanashi Governor Kotaro Nagasaki proposing the construction of a light railway to control the number of people accessing the site. “We need a shift from quantity to quality when it comes to tourism on Mount Fuji,” Nagasaki said. A local ranger called the prospect of Mount Fuji losing its heritage status “devastating.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kids having fun
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700240513838760320

 

 

Water filters are now labeled “pesticides” (because they contain silver).

 

 

Elephants
https://twitter.com/i/status/1700575172858675668

 

 

Tuna

 

 

CGI

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle September 10 2023

Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)
  • Author
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  • #142804

    Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Fall of Icarus 1558   • Wrongheaded US Leadership in Ukraine – Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Nap (Sp.) • Ice Cracking
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle September 10 2023]

    #142805
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    #142807
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The human-induced climate change hoax is a trojan horse through which unelected globalist bodies such as the United Nations, are attempting to seize totalitarian control over every minute detail of our lives, under the pretext of “saving the planet”.

    Look at this page on Saigon/Ho Chi Minh city in Cambodia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see the weather data – this is something that wikipedia is putting out there to support the climate change scam. Look how red that weather data is; even 13.8C is coloured red as if we will be burning at 13C … I wear a jumper at 13C, so why is it red? It looks like HCMC is glowing red like charcoal. The wikipedia editors are complete progressive retards which is how they know how to talk to the retards that believe their AGW scam.

    Of course the scam is total bullshit, something persuasively enforced by our now-sulking fellow commenter AFKTT who failed to convince anybody of anything, other than the possibily that the mentally ill have all been shipped to NZ. A lot of people have sympathy with the AGW scam, not because they think it is true, but because they feel that we abuse our planet through polution, destruction of natural habitat etc and that anyone trying to stop this is a good guy. I too do not like the destruction of the natural world, but I am not going to support the oligarchs who do the destruction by buying into their climate scam.

    #142808
    Red
    Participant

    testing testing

    #142809
    Red
    Participant

    Hmm working. “A lot of people have sympathy with the AGW scam, not because they think it is true, but because they feel that we abuse our planet through polution, destruction of natural habitat etc and that anyone trying to stop this is a good guy. I too do not like the destruction of the natural world, but I am not going to support the oligarchs who do the destruction by buying into their climate scam.”

    Agreed. I first went full off grid in ’07 because it was far cheaper for me than paying to have the grid pulled in over the one kilometre of my property. I grew to like no grid payments. So now I live in a place less than 25 metres from the grid and choose to stay off the grid for purely fiscal reasons. The coming structural issues that will plaque the grid will have little effect on us here, short of a CME. The internet going down would be the most inconvenient part but not crippling by any stretch. No land lines of any sort here.

    #142810
    Armenio Pereira
    Participant

    Si la jeunesse savait, si la vieillesse pouvait…

    Do away with guilt – Do away with pride – You’ll be fine – Or maybe you won’t

    #142811
    zerosum
    Participant

    CONTROLTHE MESSAGE
    My way or the highway

    You don’t know, nobody told you, about what people think is going on,that the social media platforms were coerced by the gov., in viewpoint suppression, censored views including content questioning of anti-COVID-19 measures such as masks and vaccine mandates and allegations of election fraud.

    • Biden Admin Likely Violated 1st Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit (ZH)
    ———
    Dhuu!
    Cause of inflation

    Households and businesses need to accept that they are worse off and should stop asking for wage increases and pushing prices higher and reducing the profits of the elites.
    ———–
    ” I think people are tired of being lied to by the government, by the media,” Mr. Kennedy said.

    • Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants His Party Back (ET)

    Democrat pundits say he is a fringe candidate who spreads conspiracy theories.
    ————
    ““They asked me to LIE about President Trump in order to indict him,”
    ..because I refused to lie about President Trump it cost me twenty-two years of my life.”

    • Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Drops Bombshell (GP)

    ———

    #142812
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Bud Light Welcomes New Investor Bill Gates With Limited Edition Jeffrey Epstein Cans” – Bbee
    pic
    https://media.babylonbee.com/articles/64f8f2b4a2ddb64f8f2b4a2ddc.jpg

    “Opinion: Is the Most Prosperous Era in Human History a Good Time to Have Kids?” –Bbee

    “Full Authoritarian: New Mexico Governor Suspends Constitutional Gun Rights For Law-Abiding Citizens In Albuquerque

    Open season! On lawful people! Let the shootin’ begin!

    In the video they ask (thank God) “Um, I don’t think the criminals…they um, already are breaking the laws…” Why? “Because we had to do something!!!”

    Lady. You had to DISARM all the victims? THAT is your response to violent invaders attacking people? WTF kind of sense does that make?

    “Back in 2012, DARPA began investing in gene-encoded vaccines.”

    Yes but they invest in everything. 1,000s of dumb ideas that never work. Always have. They also invest in Velcro and Teflon. It doesn’t make it bad. And the many articles above, seems like the same thing. It’s job of planners to plan; their dates will be in the future not the past. The interesting thing I see is Germany never has any medical problems according to them: it only weakens their rivals Italy and Spain. Can’t see shadows everywhere, it doesn’t strengthen your case. Or if you have to say “Yes. But this one detail fits with OTHER details,” then point to that whiteboard with thousands of pins and strings on it.

    Aliens
    https://cdn1.thecomeback.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/94/2018/06/Conspiracy-Theory-Wall-832×447.jpg

    …Even if it’s true. Like a lawyer, you pick the one thing. They always make mistakes. Like the mistake here is 100% got the vaccine, and 100% of vaccinated have Covid. Discuss?

    I can barely break through planet obvious on points like that, much less that a planner-who-plans met with a funder-who-funds.

    But this is part of knowing how the system works. I was thinking of an old-tyme BBC mini called “Edge of Darkness.” It shows these plans well. In it, an ex-policeman is retired after the death of his environmentalist daughter. As it turns out, there’s more to it than appeared, including a nuclear cover up. But like LeCarre, look at the cast: an environmentalist who isn’t. A policeman who isn’t. He’s being monitored by MI6. He meets her former Activist friends, who are also being monitored. They are/aren’t informants of the MI6/Scotland Yard crew because he’s also AWARE every other extremist he talks to THEY will know about. That means they are/aren’t actually real environmentalists but are/aren’t really government. The policeman then knows HE’S being monitored, so everyone HE talks to and everything he says is probably going to MI6. He then meets a CIA operative that’s not CIA, deniable, who is monitored/not monitored, CIA/Not CIA, legit business/but also DARPA-funded and then home office Gives orders/does not give orders to him to get in deeper with this not-policeman, who is exposed to MI6, who is investigating the death of his daughter, which MI6 wants/does not want investigated, therefore allows all these people to act ‘naturally’, so long as they have tabs on them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_Darkness

    Oh and the UK DoD is not on board and opposed to all of it.

    See what I mean, how complicated it can get? Because of lies, lies, and more lies? I’m sure that’s true of every journalist out there – they all know they’re being monitored 24/7 and therefore anyone who talks to them is therefore at risk with Derp State. So if they care, shouldn’t they actively NOT talk to people and NOT look for stories? So aren’t Taibbi, Assange, really HELPING the Derp State, if so? No? Yes? Maybe? Doesn’t that make Assange the mole-sweeping crew?

    That’s why Congress wants the records and we must have them. Instantly or everyone is fired. It’s my money and if you follow the money you can mostly follow what’s going on. Somewhat. Maybe. The CIA is self-funded with trafficking and insider trading since Papa Bush in ‘89, but you’d get a better handle on it.

    “Blinken, standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, touted that the Ukrainian military had made “real progress”

    Why are you telling me this? Who is the audience for this statement? Because, as said, the map says otherwise and even the American people are about to find out.

    “65-70,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in these past 3 months”

    Running almost twice previous estimates. And puts it at 5-600,000 dead, so we’re at a million out of service?

    “A Crimean Tatar born in Uzbekistan (USSR),”

    So…a single drop of Tartar blood? Or what?

    “Musk Talked to Russian Ambassador before Starlink Decision – WaPo (RT)

    This is incredible. And that this goes on is incredible. IF Starlink EVER worked in Crimea, we’d already know since they’d have been using it all along. Yet the story given is very specific. This is a message from somebody to somebody since the bace-level narrative is ludicrous on its face. Someone “hacked” Starlink, which Musk had left open all along, like a “Liberty Safe” or an iPhone? Or HRCs home servers? That way it’s all deniable? Then indeed Russia – who is ALSO in his servers, alongside our NSA – then did indeed “shut it off harmlessly” during an attack?

    Because y’all make no sense.

    To further confuse – like the BBC drama above – WaPo only prints it to smash Musk, who is now Evilly-evil evil man. And Twitter, the most bestest favoritist thing ever, is now evilly-evil bad for everyone. Everyone always knew that and always hated Twitter. They never bought a Tesla with their last dollar and drove it to Manhattan office or nothin’.

    “the third month of Ukraine’s botched counteroffensive”

    Is it really “botched” though? What did you expect them to do? Meta-context. That’s why the only acceptable journalistic words are “He SAID.” In this case “Failed” counteroffensive, as you can objectively prove the intent was at minimum a breakthrough. “Botched” means they erred, and if anything they’re finally improving and captured a few pointless towns barely in the first zone.

    “the US is reportedly fast-depleting its own military caches of various weapons.”

    Yes. The White Hats want us depleted. There are many reasons but let’s just say, how are the NeoCons going to storm around the world with no jets and no bullets? I guess we’ll just have to stay home and do “America First.” Oh, CHINA will invade? First, they can’t invade, that’s laughable. No one is invading us. Second, didn’t you just see the space weapons we have used take out a whole town with precision? There’s no “Shell production” for that, which is why we’re not turning on our buggy-whip factories.

    “I posted Justin Hart’s tweet yesterday, with a long list of officials affected by the decision. Will they stop?”

    No they will not. They will have to be physically removed and jailed. Our task is to not allow that to create a civil war.

    “But, beyond express threats, there was always an unspoken ‘or else,’” it added”

    Yes, but we always talk around and miss every point because of the blizzard of lies. They can’t do this because it’s illegal under Sec230. The very ACT of doing it strips them of protection. Ever. Always. That means from the first minute, they are and must be a Government-Corporate merger. We proved that on the first page and still have a million document pages to go.

    ““I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, told US media.”

    Uh huh. I guess we’ll have to find out which of the two of us is disconnected and living in fantasy. Newsflash: 100% of the time, it’s not the People. To “Live in Fantasy” one has to have money and power. Where would they get that from?

    “The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Furman says.”

    He’s right, that IS a good way to think about it. We WERE in 25% inflation, where your wages are cut in half every two years, but now we’re in 5% inflation where your wages are cut in half only every 10 years. Newsflash for those without wealth and power, who work for governments with Federal Union inflation adjustments: ANY inflation above zero is deadly. You reduced Inflation from “Terrible” to “Very bad”. That means Joe and Bidenomics are “Very Bad.” To us.

    Now why they think this very bad thing is very bad? That make no sense. Sad panda is sad. No, to WIN, we’d have to have dead-NEGATIVE inflation. MINUS 5-10% inflation. Where things cost LESS each month. Just to get us BACK to “Bad” we had LAST year. Or wages RISE 10% a month for years, your choice. Either would blow your whole Western Financial system to kingdom come, collapsing the entire West into ruin that makes the Great Depression look orderly and elegant. Yeah. I know. That all makes every sentence here irrelevant and totally off-point.

    What will it take to convince voters that inflation is no longer a problem?”

    That’s impossible. How can we convince voters gravity doesn’t suck?

    “Indeed, if a 3% inflation rate (coupled with wages that rise faster than 3%) remains in effect indefinitely, people will eventually feel good (or less bad) about the economy.”

    Hahahaha! And if a frog had stilts he wouldn’t bump his -ss on the ground. Never once in my life have wages exceeded inflation. That’s generations(of 20 years). Do I need to post the straight-down chart? Oh “you could make money in the market: all you have to do is buy the right stocks!” Easy! Same argument. If impossible things would only happen, impossible outcomes would occur. Again: this does not jibe with the experience of anyone living today.

    And he’s so ADORABLE about gas prices. Home price and rents have DOUBLED since possibly ‘08. Big as they are, gas prices don’t compare; they’d barely operate to create relief, massive though they are. Mortgage doubled from $1000/mo at 3x income to $2,000/mo at 9x income. Do YOU spend $1,000 a month on gas? I sure hope not. It’s probably physically impossible unless you commute to Boston from Bangor.

    ““…growth in corporate profits accounted for 45% of inflation in Europe last year..”

    Possibly. And I believe it. However, their “Profits” are merely A) Inflation itself. If you sell the same 100 widgets at 40% inflation, it’s 40% “Additional Profit” isn’t it? But B) In a raging inflation environment, you need a enormous war chest or die. That’s compounded by the war chest you sock is shrinking every moment you try to fill it. But that’s “Visibility”. Stability. Capitalism works on being able to predict anticipate, and get things out there in the FUTURE. It’s a Time-Machine. If you guess wrong, you die.(or used to and are supposed to) So if you bugger up the future both with additional horror AND no visibility, you’re really destroying Capitalism itself.

    …Which is the whole point of course. And just as Lenin said. “There Is No Alternative”. Government is just a-gonna have to take over industry, medicine, housing, everything. Shucks. But “Only Temporarily”. It’s “An Emergency.”

    “Democrat pundits say he is a fringe candidate who spreads conspiracy theories.”

    Do they now? Which ones? Because others DON’T say that.

    “Polls show him with the highest favorability rating of any presidential candidate.”

    Oh, I see, only “fringe conspiracy theory pundits” do. Because if they were anywhere near mainstream they couldn’t disagree with their own base and audience so radically.

    “• Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Drops Bombshell (GP)

    This is entrapment, obstruction, witness tampering, soliciting false testimony and like 20 levels of felonies. By the government, which should be held to a far higher standard. No one even THINKS about investigating, charging, and removing them for being serial felons. Not even discussed. Why? How do you arrest your own government? Civil War = They Win.

    “The DOJ admitted to altering evidence in Flynn’s case”

    So everyone was arrested, fired, impeached, and jailed, right?

    “5.1 million,”

    Law of large numbers says that’s 14,000 people a day. A whole city each day.

    ““pesticides” (because they contain silver).”

    Whut? Nevermind, they make up new illegal rules without Congress every day. Now a block of aluminum bauxite ore in the ground is a lower receiver, registered automatic machine gun. Why? Because I was in the break room a minute ago and thought it up. Silver, which is legal to have, was in your pocket not a year ago, now = dangerous poison. And so is an organic grass-fed Wagu steak. I decided and outlawed it a minute after.

    #142813
    John Day
    Participant

    Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing (AMOS)
    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/air-force-maui-optical-and-supercomputing

    ​ The AFRL Directed Energy Directorate operates two major telescope sites that are used to advance SSA technologies. One of these sites is located on Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, and the other site is located on Maui, Hawaii. The Maui site is called the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing (AMOS) site…
    ​ The AMOS site consists of two facilities that conduct SDA operations and research and development (R&D). The first facility is the Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS) and the second is the Maui High Performance Computing Center (MHPCC).
    ​ Research thrusts at the AMOS site include satellite detection and identification, atmospheric compensation and resolved imaging, astrodynamics and orbital metrics, sensor development, laser propagation through the Earth’s atmosphere, database cataloging of satellite images, and high-performance computer modeling and simulation. In addition to its use as an R&D facility, AMOS has been called upon to help identify and/or track spacecraft payloads and communication satellites.
    ​ The unique focus on research and development as well as operations provides a rapid development cycle from concept to operational implementation.

    AIR FORCE MAUI OPTICAL AND SUPERCOMPUTING (AMOS) SITE

    5/24/2023​ An upward trajectory for directed-energy weapons
    ​ Directed-energy weapons are electromagnetic systems that convert chemical or electrical energy to radiated energy. They are focused on target and on physical damage that degrades, neutralizes, defeats, or destroys an adversarial capability. Directed-energy weapons include systems that use high-energy lasers that emit photons, and high-power microwaves that release high-power radio frequency waves.
    ​ High-power microwave weapons create beams of electromagnetic energy over a broad spectrum of radio and microwave frequencies intended to couple and interact with electronics located at a target and then causing damage or temporary disruption.
    ​ “There’s no direct definition for what’s the difference between a high-power microwave directed-energy weapon and a radar, but we’ve tempted to basically have a dividing point of that,” says John Tatum in a webinar, sponsored by the Defense Systems Information Analysis Center in 2019 ” If a source has a peak effective radiated power of greater than 100 megawatts or radiated energy of greater than one joule per second, it typically will fall into the area of high-power microwave sources.”​…
    ..Air Force Research Laboratory-Kirtland demonstrated a mobile tactical high-power microwave operational responder (THOR), with an aggressive agenda to reach warfighters soon. The intent of THOR is to be up and running in three hours by two people. It’s designed to take down several enemy unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) simultaneously with rotational antenna control to provide 360-degree coverage, with the firing mechanism and overall systems control, coming from a laptop computer…
    ..Also in the report, OSD also requested $11 million in FY2023 to continue ongoing assessments of directed energy weapons, including assessments of the weapons’ effects, effectiveness, and limitations. In addition, DARPA’s Waveform Agile Radiofrequency Directed Energy (WARDEN) program seeks to “extend the range and lethality of high-power microwave weapons … [for] counter-unmanned aerial systems, vehicle and vessel disruption, electronic strike, and guided missile defense.” …
    ..”Directed-energy weapons have been deployed primarily as a force multiplier, able to damage physical targets with greater precision and accuracy, resulting in a competitive advantage over traditional weapons. Especially given the current heightened global threat landscape in Europe and Asia, militaries are seeking any potential advantages,” he says…
    ​..”A key trend right now is the imperative to reduce size, weight, power, and cooling (SWaP-C) requirements in order to make these weapons viable for operational deployment,” says Stoudt. “There is an ongoing challenge of directed energy weapon systems being too heavy, too large, too under-powered, and too expensive for widespread deployment.
    ​ In the modern battlespace, we must balance the need for power with the need for mobility. Now, with the development of fiber lasers, electromagnetic and high-energy weapons can take a more meaningful role in the DOD arsenal. By using modular open-system architectures and optimizing SWaP-C, military and operational utility is enhanced to bring directed energy where it previously couldn’t be integrated into warfighting platforms.”​ …
    ..At The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) recently opened a new High-Power Electromagnetic Effects and Modeling Facility at Kirtland AFB. The new $6 million facility supports high-powered radio frequency weapons systems and contains a dedicated forensic lab for studying a range of HPEM targets after engagement. The new facility will allow for greater collaboration as the Air Force is set to advance directed energy technologies.

    ​Air Force Research Laboratory-Kirtland demonstrated a tactical high power microwave operational responder (THOR), with an aggressive agenda to reach warfighters soon.
    https://www.militaryaerospace.com/power/article/14292443/an-upward-trajectory-for-directedenergy-weapons

    ​ The Vigilant Eagle Airport Protection System is a proposed directed-energy weapon under development by the U.S. military under a Defense Department contract with Raytheon. It would create an invisible microwave dome around an airport that could block missiles heading toward incoming and outgoing aircraft.​..
    ​..Raytheon’s experimentation with directed energy weapons began when its research labs’ experiments had inadvertently produced the first microwave oven in 1958. Under William Swanson, Raytheon’s chairman and CEO, the company has become even more focused on directed energy systems. He has stated “When I look at directed energy, it’s clear that if someone is gonna put us out of business, it will be us.”​ …
    ..Within the last three years, the company’s researchers have shot down multiple types of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles at a distance of several miles with pulses of microwave energy…
    ​..The first large difference between the ground-based Vigilant Eagle and other aircraft protection systems is the lower cost between it and its rivals. Mike Booen, Raytheon’s chief of directed-energy programs estimates that the system can be built for about $25 million per airport if the system is deployed in at least 25 airports. Of all the airports located within the U.S., the top 31 airports account for 70% of the country’s takeoffs and landings. “If Vigilant Eagle is installed in all of them, the expenditure would total less than $1 billion, compared with the $6–$12 billion it would take to install protection systems on 6,000 aircraft”.
    ​ Airline carriers have also stated concerns with airplane-mounted systems because of the weight and cost of these systems. The DHS has stated that the cost of each flight carrying the countermeasure would be approximately $350. During the airlines’ best year ever, they only earned about $600 per flight. It is also unclear whether the airlines or the government would bear the cost of using these types of systems.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigilant_Eagle

    ​ The ALKA directed-energy weapon (DEW) system is a Turkish dual electromagnetic/laser weapon developed by Roketsan.[1] It was first unveiled at the 2019 IDEF exhibition on 8 May 2019. This combat laser was allegedly used to destroy one of GNC’s Wing Loong II UAVs; if true, this would represent the first known time a vehicle-mounted combat laser was used to destroy another combat vehicle during genuine wartime conditions.​..
    ​..The ALKA DEW is claimed to have a power of 50 kW.​ It operates both laser and electromagnetic systems. It purportedly uses automatic target recognition utilizing both electro-optical and radar detection[2] to track multiple targets simultaneously. It is claimed by its designers to have the capability to disable a swarm of drones at a range of 4000 m,[​ destroy a target with laser at 500 m distance and destroy a target at 1000 m distance with electromagnetic weapons.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALKA_(weapon)

    #142814
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    McCullough might want to open his aperture a bit. See Larry Niven, A World Out Of time and The Fourth Profession. Both have mRNA plot devices. The former was written half a century ago.

    #142815
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    I realize I could be slightly less obtuse. What were Niven and friends doing for DARPA during the Reagan administration? Yes, lasers and stuff, but that’s the flash for public consumption.

    #142816
    zerosum
    Participant

    Since, the vaccine, covid are increasing depopulation at an earlier age, do you think that the remainder population will make a better society?

    #142817

    When the WHO runs off with the reins of power, the first thing they will do is declare a “gun-violence health emergency”.
    Then, I think, the US will get the civil war its left wing craves so much.

    A freebie from Penzey’s Spices says on the package:
    “Justice is the light that has guided America through every storm. Now one party wants to obstruct it, twist it, steal it away from We the People to gift it to their donors. America’s future depends on us not letting that happen.
    Season liberally ™”
    “Liberally” might give me a hint, but to whom are they speaking?

    #142818
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Accidentally prescient title, cognitive dissonance, ego vs other… Like many of their songs, there’s a lot to unpack for 3.5 minutes.

    Barrytown – Steely Dan

    Leave me be, or I’ll be like the others you will meet
    They won’t act as kindly if they see you on the street
    Don’t you make a scream or shout
    It’s nothing you can do about
    It was there when you came out
    It’s a special lack of grace
    I can see it in your face
    I can see by what you carry that you come from Barrytown!

    #142819
    jb-hb
    Participant

    What were Niven and friends doing for DARPA during the Reagan administration?

    Niven and Pournelle were running the Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy and the L5 society. A bunch of high powered scientists, generals, and scifi writers meeting at his house. Up until recently you could subscribe to their newsletter by mailing $5 to Niven’s house.

    If you want an overview of what those guys were thinking, it’s:
    Space: The Crucial Frontier – Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy (1981)
    https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/Crucial-Frontier-1981.pdf

    L5 got rolled into the National Space Society, which has a charming website https://space.nss.org/ – their old publications are in their “Space Library” if you are a fan of nostalgic retro futurism

    How endearing, the idea of these guys just meeting up in Niven’s little house (1060 E Elm St. Tuscon AZ – openly listed in the 1981 paper as the L5 “headquarters”) to discuss this stuff, the trusting giving-out of home address, his description of the meeting sounding almost like a bunch of buddies getting together to play D&D, or more likely Traveler or Star Frontiers. Or if the SDI defenses didn’t work in the case of world war 3, then Twilight or Gamma World.

    A quaint, charming front? Dunno. But there’s their paper on what they said they wanted. Their “space library” https://space.nss.org/national-space-society-library/ has all sorts of papers on various subjects from different eras

    #142820
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “A Crimean Tatar born in Uzbekistan (USSR)”

    So…a single drop of Tartar blood? Or what?

    I can explain! It is a small story.

    The Turks used to own Crimea, and would launch regular slave taking raids on the surrounding steppe, in-depth (horsemen) actually denuding the region significantly of human population. Why were the Russian steppes so empty with such good farming land? Well, there’s a reason.

    The Russians built a dike/wall sort of like the vikings did in england would do, running for hundreds of miles to try to restrict the Turkish raids. Visible from space most likley, I forget the exact name of it. In a single year’s invasion, for instance, the Turks burnt down Moscow and took 150,000 Russians as slaves.

    So the Turkish Khaganate on the northern side of the Black Sea was a constant source of human suffering, a real continual thorn in the side of Russia. As soon as Russia was powerful enough, they conquered it as a matter of self defense, to close off Turkish access on the north side of the Black Sea. Filled it with Russians because how else are you going to keep it? Accomplished around the same time the US ratified its Articles of Confederation

    Accuse the Russians of being big meanie expansionists for Crimea in the 1700’s and I don’t think you will compel a tear out of them. For hundreds of years, the Turks kidnapped into slavery a nation’s worth of people.

    When the Germans overran Crimea in WW2, the Turks there sided with the Germans, did the kind of dirty work Nazi-sympathizers in other places like Ukraine, Croatia, etc did. After the war, when Russians returned to Crimea, they found homes and farms burnt out, friends and family executed, generally the kind of stuff that would enrage a bunch of battle hardened soldiers

    Amazingly, Stalin DIDN’T have the crimean turks liquidated. Cmon man, you’re Stalin. No, he had them all shipped by train to central asia. There, they and their descendants tend groves of fruit trees unmolested. Really lucky break. The Volga-Deutsche didn’t get a deal like that, and they were Mennonite pacifists.

    A Crimean Tatar born in Uzbekistan (USSR)

    Translation – descendent of relocated nazi sympathizers.

    #142822
    hexadec
    Participant

    “How can we convince voters gravity doesn’t suck?”

    Brought to mind a Reina Del Cid lyric from “Edge of the Universe.”

    “There’s nothing so cruel as old gravity.”

    #142823
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @jb-hb: right on!

    Pournelle – serious space travel, social conservative

    Some more friends of DARPA/CIA:

    Brin – cybernetics, transhumanism, trans-‘dolphinism’, ‘woke’
    Vinge – software, ‘AI’, seemed to take a very ‘woke’ turn somewhere
    Benford – genetics, general repair of and anti-aging, telomeres (!!!)

    …and, for the foil-adorned…

    Clarke and Kubrick – co-developed 2001: A Space Odyssey at roughly the same time as moon landing

    I may try to write something substantial about this, since I’ve got a list of similar (not just SciFi) flagged as weird, or at least as ‘Gen. Turgidson’ naiive and enthusiastic.

    —————————-

    Three Degrees of Larry Niven

    My former boss/family friend attended a party high on a hill in Glendale, colleague of high standing, in a house that can be described as a fully-functional Living VAX/PDP Museum and Equipment Lease/Loan. Alan Frisbee, Flying Disc Systems, was among the truly smart that I met along my career path. His parties drew lots of hardware wonks, NASA folks, university faculty, authors…which is how my boss had met Niven, at a party where nearly everyone in attendance would have been ‘neck beard’ to the max. My boss and Niven could have been mistaken for twins, but they had the same first name! 🙂

    #142824
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    Your in the real Holocaust now folks, not the fake 1 they beat into your head at school.. Austerity, just a fancy word for poverty is whats on the menu. They stole it all already. They want you dead, crippled and broke. Going after water filters should show you how vindictive and evil these motherfuckers are.. If you cannot recognize ZOG, at this late and dangerous hour, you are fucked.

    #142825
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    Macgregor is telling you the same thing I am, he’s just not willing to say who. He would’nt be on TV no more, would he? He’d be Kanyed, as it were.. Global elites, gimme a fuckin break.

    #142826
    aspnaz
    Participant

    @CelticBiker Regulations are the chains that the government use to control our lives. In this case they are obviously targeting Berkey for reasons other than harm done by their filters, this looks like a personal attack for the usual corrupt reasons; maybe someone in the EPA has a friend bringing out a competing water filter. I will remind you that many members of the public have silver cutlery, teapots and coffee pots. Is that cutlery now to be classified as pesticides? Is the precious metals and pesticides markets to be merged? Stupid people in government wasting tax payers money, like giving a chimp a silver spoon.

    It is quite an interesting read … https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/blog/berkey/BERKEY-WATER-FILTERS-SUES-THE-EPA

    #142827

    So there’s a football game on and I said “Why do all football games sound alike?” and of course the thing is that the vocabulary is very, very, very small. There’s a good deal of emotion as the announcer yells that someone is doing something spectacular. People repeat the ritual again and again….
    I wonder: could Chat, etal, make up an exciting football game (and while it’s at it, provide animation of the game as well?).
    Gee.

    #142828
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Physiognomy

    NOUN

    A person’s facial features or expression, especially when regarded as indicative of character or ethnic origin:
    “friends began to notice a change in his physiognomy”

    Their Physiognomy is the result of drinking children’s blood and adenochrome after ritual sacrifice

    .

    .

    .

    #142829
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Duh’mericans

    .

    #142830
    Oroboros
    Participant

    My mine is exploding from Stupid

    .

    #142831

    If the “Clients” series from Bud’s Epstein Beer is available, I’d buy a few cans.

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