Jan 212024
 
 January 21, 2024  Posted by at 9:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Rembrandt van Rijn The Three Crosses 1653

 

Commissioner Requests Fani Willis Produce Info On ‘Misuse’ Of County Funds (DC)
Fani Willis Handed Lucrative Contracts To Her Alleged Lover’s Law Partner (DC)
Trump Believes Supreme Court Will ‘Intervene’ Soon (ET)
What Are “They” Afraid That a “Dictator”/President Trump Might Do? (VDH)
The Dangerous Myth of the “Indispensable Nation” (Goodman)
Gaza, Yemen & Ukraine Sound Death Knell for ‘Rules-Based World Order’ (SCF)
Starving Gaza: Egypt and Israel’s Rafah Weapon (Cradle)
Letting Ukraine into NATO Is ‘Basis For World War Three’ – Fico (RT)
This Is Not Another ‘Phoney War’ (Patrick Lawrence)
Top Biden Aides: Ukraine Will Lose in Weeks or Months Without Aid (Sp.)
Ukraine Openly Asks West To Use Its Army As A Proxy (RT)
The Many Faces Of Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s Financial Patron (Turley)
A New Party Is Reshaping The German Political Landscape (Amar)
The Last Cut For Alexei Kudrin Is The Deepest (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Trump Mona Lisa

 

 

Jack Posobiec:

Trump just got the entire media to finally admit Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security on Jan 6

 

 

Rogan food
https://twitter.com/i/status/1748710904600912176

 

 

Mandow

 

 

 

 

Fani Willis is the gift that keeps on giving. Trump should want her to stay on.

““There was an ask of her about how much money was being spent on the Trump proceedings,” he told the DCNF. “Essentially the answer was you know, well…’Lady Justice isn’t on a budget.’”

Commissioner Requests Fani Willis Produce Info On ‘Misuse’ Of County Funds (DC)

Fulton County Commissioner Bob Ellis requested Friday that District Attorney Fani Willis disclose information relating to her potential “misuse” of county funds in her decision to appoint her alleged lover, Nathan Wade, as outside counsel in the case against former President Donald Trump. Bank statements contained in a court filing Friday revealed that Wade purchased two airline tickets in Willis’ name, backing up allegations made in a motion by a Trump co-defendant that she benefited from the “lucrative” contract she awarded Wade when he took her on trips to these locations. Ellis told the Daily Caller News Foundation that “all Fulton county citizens and taxpayers deserve clear and truthful answers” from Willis, who he earlier noted has been “relatively obstinate” in answering questions from commissioners.

He added that it will “ultimately be decided in a court proceeding” whether the information known to date will disqualify Willis from leading Trump’s prosecution, noting that “the average person likely concludes that something isn’t right with all of this.” Willis was accused of enjoying cruises and vacations that Wade had paid for using county funds garnered from his work as a special prosecutor on Willis’ case against Trump. Wade has earned over $650,000 in legal fees from the county since the start of 2022. In the letter obtained by the DCNF, Ellis requested Willis provide by Feb. 2 invoices for special prosecutors’ expenses and fees, their contracts with the office, payments from the office, the “professional experience” of each special prosecutor utilized by the office, as well as the “source of funding for any payments to special prosecutors” from Jan. 1, 2021 until now. The letter also requests Willis provide information relating to “laws, rules, or regulations” that apply to a district attorney’s selection of a special prosecutor.

“Separate from any potential inquiry by the State of Georgia, this situation requires confirmation of whether County funds provided for the operation of your office and its prosecutorial function were used in an appropriate manner, and whether any payments of County funds to Mr. Wade were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts,” the letter to Willis states. Ellis earlier confirmed to the DCNF that Willis did not ask the Fulton County Board of Commissioners’ permission before hiring Wade, though he noted it “may be a matter of legal interpretation” whether the board’s approval was required. “There was an ask of her about how much money was being spent on the Trump proceedings,” he told the DCNF. “Essentially the answer was you know, well…’Lady Justice isn’t on a budget.’” Commissioner Bridget Thorne confirmed to the DCNF that “approval for outside counsel never came through us.” “Our County attorney tells us that she doesn’t believe Fani Willis needed our approval,” she said.

Georgia law, GA Code § 15-18-20, states that the district attorney in each circuit may employ outside counsel “as may be authorized by the governing authority of the county or counties comprising the judicial circuit.” “There is no requirement that the District Attorney get permission from Fulton County to hire a special prosecutor,” a spokesperson for the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia told the DCNF, citing their Executive Director Pete Skandalakis. “Fulton County’s Code of Ordinances does not apply to the DA. The DA is a constitutional state officer.” Ellis also requested Willis provide information about the method her office used in determining the hourly rate each special prosecutor earns, as well as the basis for any differentiation of rates in their contracts. Wade has been paid at a rate of $250 an hour, while the attorney known as Georgia’s top racketeering expert, John Floyd, was initially paid only $150 and was later paid $200 an hour, according to contracts and billing statements obtained by the DCNF.

Willis had falsely claimed Sunday that she paid all three special counsels on the case the same hourly rate. “I’m a little confused. I appointed three special counsels, as is my right to do, paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one,” Willis during remarks Sunday, making an indirect reference to Wade. The state’s response to Trump co-defendant Michael Roman’s motion to disqualify Fani Willis is also due by Feb. 2, before the hearing Judge Scott McAffee scheduled to consider the issue on Feb. 15. A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp told the DCNF that “the Georgia General Assembly laid out a specific oversight process for district attorneys that is transparent and unbiased, which the governor supported and signed into law.” “The governor has repeatedly stated that these allegations are deeply troubling, that evidence should be presented in order for the judge in this case to rule quickly, and that complaints regarding any district attorney’s conduct can be referred to the oversight commission once the legislative process concludes this session and the commission begins full operations,” the spokesperson said.

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“It’s not just the issue about Wade being her paramour and the issue of kickbacks, but she also got the funds by misleading the Fulton County Commissioners about what the funds were going to be used for..”

Fani Willis Handed Lucrative Contracts To Her Alleged Lover’s Law Partner (DC)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ hired her alleged lover’s law partner to work for her office at a rate of $150 an hour, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation — an arrangement that is raising eyebrows among legal experts who question her spending of public funds. Christopher Campbell, a partner at Wade & Campbell Firm, has received $126,070 from the Office of the District Attorney since 2021, according to county records. Willis hired Campbell to provide services as a “Taint Attorney” reviewing privileged evidence beginning in Jan. 2021 at a rate of $150 an hour, contracts obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show. “Taint attorneys” help sift through files obtained from a search warrant to filter out evidence covered by things like attorney-client privilege and prevent them from being passed to prosecutors.

Willis appointed Campbell’s partner, Nathan Wade, in November 2021 to serve as special prosecutor in the case against former President Donald Trump despite him allegedly being her boyfriend. A co-defendant of former President Donald Trump accused Willis in a motion last week of awarding Wade, her alleged lover, a “lucrative” contract, claiming she benefited from it because he took her on trips and cruises using the money he earned from the position. The motion further alleged Willis never secured approval from the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to appoint Wade and paid him using funds she requested to clear a backlog of cases from the COVID-19 pandemic. The circumstances surrounding the contracts raise concerns about Willis’ allocation of funds, legal experts told the DCNF.

John Malcolm, vice president for the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government and former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, told the DCNF that payments to Campbell could pose additional problems for Willis if his work as a taint attorney was for the Trump case. “It’s not just the issue about Wade being her paramour and the issue of kickbacks, but she also got the funds by misleading the Fulton County Commissioners about what the funds were going to be used for,” he said. “In addition to that, it would enrich [Wade’s] firm.” Willis hired three outside attorneys to work on the Trump case — Wade, John Floyd and Anna Cross. Willis claimed that she paid all three special counsels on the Trump case the same hourly rate, though billing statements obtained by the DCNF revealed she was paying Floyd a lower hourly rate than Wade, her alleged lover.

Campbell’s contract, which spans from Jan. 25, 2021 to Jan. 25, 2022, places him at the same hourly pay rate Willis initially awarded Floyd, who’s known as Georgia’s top racketeering expert, in his contract beginning in April 2021. Other billing statements and contracts show Floyd was later paid $200 an hour. Willis also contracted with Anna Cross, a prosecutor with 20 years of experience who has represented Georgia in multiple high-profile homicide cases, to work at a rate of $250 an hour, according to contracts obtained by the DCNF. Wade’s contracts starting on Nov. 1, 2021 and billing statements reveal he received $250 an hour for his work as special prosecutor, $100 more than his partner, Campbell. Wade has received nearly $654,000 from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office since the start of 2022, according to county records.

Wade and Campbell’s former law partner, Terrence Bradley, has also been paid $74,480 by the District Attorney’s office since 2021, according to county records. Under a separate contract spanning from March 1, 2021 to April 30, 2021, Campbell was also hired to provide services as a “First Appearance Attorney” at a rate of $65 an hour, according to the document. The job is to represent the District Attorney’s Office at a defendant’s First Appearance hearing, which is held before a judge within 72 hours of arrest to consider the issue of bond and notify the defendant of charges. “This is a mystery in and of itself,” Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway told the DCNF. “I have no clue why any DA’s office needs to pay a private lawyer to handle ‘first appearance’ calendars. Any Assistant DA could easily do that. They are already on the payroll and it is the most simple of all tasks.”

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Gavin Newsom: “we defeat candidates at the polls.” He added, “Everything else is a political distraction.”

Trump Believes Supreme Court Will ‘Intervene’ Soon (ET)

Former President Donald Trump said he believes the U.S. Supreme Court will “intervene” in multiple cases to prevent him from appearing on state ballots, forecasting that the three justices he nominated to the high court will rule in his favor. Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday evening, the former president said that the justices are “not going to take the vote away from the people” because of “three great justices” and “other great justices up there.” During his term in office, President Trump nominated Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. “I’m sure the Supreme Court is going to say, ‘We’re not going to take the vote away from the people,’” he continued to say, saying that Democrats are the real “threat to democracy” in the United States.

Last month, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a 4–3 decision to prevent the former president from appearing on state ballots, citing their interpretation of the “insurrection” clause of the Constitution’s 14th amendment. They claimed that they believed President Trump engaged in an insurrection against the U.S. government despite him having not been convicted or charged with the crime in any court. Days later, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, issued a unilateral decision to bar the former president from that state’s ballots under similar pretexts. Unlike Colorado, which is expected to lean heavily Democratic in the 2024 election, Maine could be considered a battleground state, and President Trump won one of the state’s four electors during the 2020 contest.

Meanwhile, according to the former president, the Supreme Court justices should factor in his strong poll numbers and recent win in the Iowa caucuses. National polling averages show that he has a 50-point advantage over the second-place and third-place GOP presidential candidates—former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “But I don’t think the Supreme Court would [agree with decisions to keep him from ballots] because you can’t take the vote,“ the former commander-in-chief added to Mr. Hannity. ”You know, I’m leading in every poll … I’m leading the remaining Republicans … they’re barely hanging on. How can you possibly take the vote away?” In a Truth Social post earlier on Thursday, President Trump said he hoped that it would be “an easy decision” for the Supreme Court. “God bless the Supreme Court,” he added.

The former president several weeks ago appealed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court before the high court accepted it. Arguments in the case are scheduled for next month. This week, more than 170 congressional Republicans—including some of its leadership—filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, arguing to keep President Trump on the 2024 ballots. “Disqualification under Section 3 is an extraordinarily harsh result, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s own text confirms that Congress, representing the Nation’s various interests and constituencies, is the best judge of when to authorize Section 3’s affirmative enforcement,” the lawmakers wrote in their brief. The Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, they added, “will only supercharge state officials to conjure bases for labeling political opponents as having engaged in insurrection.“

What’s more, the nine justices should overturn that ruling to reduce the ”partisan incentive“ to remove political opponents from ballots under the 14th Amendment’s Section 3, or ”insurrectionist ban,” according to the lawmakers. Also this week, a Maine Superior Court judge concluded she lacked authority to stay the judicial proceedings but she wrote that she did have authority to send the case back to the secretary of state with instructions to await the outcome of the U.S. Supreme Court case before withdrawing, modifying or upholding her original decision. In the decision, the judge said that the issues raised in the Maine case mirror the issues raised in the Colorado case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She wrote that her decision “minimizes any potentially destabilizing effect of inconsistent decisions and will promote greater predictability in the weeks ahead of the primary election.”

Days before that, in Oregon, the state Supreme Court issued a statement saying that it would not rule on a ballot-related challenge against President Trump “for now” until the U.S. high court renders its decision. A number of other federal and state judges in different jurisdictions have also rejected similar ballot-related lawsuits seeking to bar the former president from appearing on the ballots. The nation’s highest court has never ruled on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Some left-wing legal scholars and activists say the post-Civil War clause applies to President Trump, while some have noted that he was never charged with those crimes. In California, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement last month rejecting a push to bar the former president from his state’s ballots in 2024, writing that in the Golden State, “we defeat candidates at the polls.” He added, “Everything else is a political distraction.”

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Pretty brilliant Victor Davis Hanson X thread.

What Are “They” Afraid That a “Dictator”/President Trump Might Do? (VDH)

As Joe Biden’s political viability implodes, the exasperated Left has yet a new narrative: front-runner Trump and his extremist/semi-fascist/Ultra MAGA 160 million are out for “revenge” and “retribution—and that Trump might well become a “dictator” and “trample” the Constitution. Ok, let’s examine what a supposed dictator Trump might do if he were to be elected this November?

1) Will he hide the fact that in 2024 he attempted to hire a foreign ex-spy to work with Russian sources to create a fake anti-Biden dossier (while sneakily hiding his payments behind three paywalls), seed it with the media, and hatch lies that Biden was a “Putin poodle” and “Russian asset”?

2) Would a Trump president weaponize a vengeful FBI to begin contracting with X and Facebook to suppress stories he feels will hurt MAGA candidates? Would his FBI alter FISA warrants to go after his leftwing opponents? Would he and his FBI henchmen have leftwing newspapers blacklisted from X?

3) Would Trump’s future Secretary of State round up 51 right-wing ex-CIA “authorities” to swear and lie on the eve of the balloting that the Russians created the Stormy Daniels nondisclosure agreement?

4) Maybe Trump will get his DOJ to go easy on any future accusations of tax fraud on behalf of his sons by weaponizing the IRS.

5) Maybe Trump will dictatorially cancel student loan debt on the eve of the 2026 midterms. Or would he dare by fiat drain the strategic petroleum reserve merely for Republican advantage in the midterms?

6) Maybe a dictator Trump might appoint a special counsel to investigate the entire Biden family. Would his legal counsel consult with local and state Republican prosecutors to coordinate 90 or so more indictments against ex-president Joe Biden? Will he order the FBI to sweep down on one of the Biden residences to hunt for more missing classified files that Biden removed as a senator and vice president?

7) Will he postfacto declare the 2020 riots to be an armed “insurrection” and retroactively start trying, convicting, and jailing the some 14,000 who were arrested and released—on charges of rioting, looting, arson, murder, and assault, in addition to “illegal parading” and conspiracy to burn a federal courthouse, a city police precinct, a historic church? Would dictator Trump keep in preventative detention indefinitely those arrested in 2020 for rioting and violent protest?

8) Maybe dictator Trump will refuse to discuss all medical questions concerning his 78-year age.

9) Will Trump minions in the media and military start talking about rooting out “leftwing rage”, or Antifa and BLM “domestic terrorists” from the military ranks? Would Trump order the Pentagon to discharge any soldier who refused to get one of his Operation Warp Speed COVID mRNA boosters?

10) Will dictator Trump protect some 500 “sanctuary cities” from ignoring federal laws—as they nullify the endangered species list or federal gun registrations statutes?

11) Would dictator Trump’s America destroy the southern border deliberately and invite in 10 million illegal aliens from countries he thought would ensure new conservative voters?

12 ) Would dictator Trump’s America start seeing red-states removing the names of Democratic candidates from the ballot?

13) Would dictator Trump start jailing ex-Biden officials who refused Republican congressional subpoenas?

14) Would dictator Trump’s America turn over $50 billion in weapons and supplies to terrorists like the Taliban?

15) Would dictator Trump’s America see an epidemic of big-city lawlessness, as conservative prosecutors deliberately let out felons convicted of smash and grab and car-jacking, and exempted theft and shoplifting from punishment?

16) Would dictator Trump start shaking down foreign governments to send $30 million into the Trump family coffers?

17) Would dictator Trump camp out at Mar-a-Lago for 3-4 days a week, and turn the presidency into a pastime job?

So what exactly would a “dictator” Trump do that our “civil libertarian” Joe Biden already has not done?

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“.. the “influence of our example” would “overthrow them all without a single exception.”

The Dangerous Myth of the “Indispensable Nation” (Goodman)


“But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. Our nation’s memory is long and our reach is far.” – Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, 1998.

“We are the indispensable nation. American leadership is what holds the world together.” – President Joe Biden, 2023.

“The United States is still…the ‘indispensable nation’ in the Middle East.” –David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist, 2024.

There is no better declarative indicator of American arrogance and hubris than the self-appointed title of “indispensable nation.” Liberal pundits and critics believe that the notion of the indispensable nation had its origins in the post-Cold War era following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In actual fact, the ideological origins of the indispensable nation were “present at the creation,” if I can borrow the title of Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s trenchant memoir. The idea of the unique international standing of the United States was part of the Founding Fathers’ debate over our global role in 1789. Liberal pundits and critics argue that U.S. “internationalism” was unique to twentieth-century diplomacy, but our notions of free commerce and liberal democracy were there at the outset. They cite former presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman in their discussion of “internationalism.” But John Quincy Adams, arguing that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” envisioned the United States as a threat to Europe’s autocratic regimes. Adams added that the “influence of our example” would “overthrow them all without a single exception.”

The success of the Revolutionary War created a sense of American nationalism and internationalism that was manifested in our nineteenth-century wars against Britain (1812), Mexico (1846), and Spain (1898). The Constitution has little to say about war, peace, and diplomacy: Article I grants Congress the power to declare war; Article II grants the president the power to serve as commander-in-chief. But the Founding Fathers accepted George Washington’s dictum that “if you wish for peace, prepare for war.” As early as 1783, Alexander Hamilton called for the drafting of our first national security strategy. Ignatius’s notion that the United States is the “indispensable nation” in the Middle East is particularly naive. In reality, the Middle East is our briar patch. We have no influence over Israel, the region’s superpower; we have been unable—perhaps unwilling—to reduce the misery suffered by innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; and we have been unable to deter regional actors from using force despite our military presence.

The United States and Israel are totally at odds on the post-war scenario; the idea of a two-state solution; the role of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza; and the role of the Arab states in the rebuilding of Gaza. President Biden’s address on the 100th day of the Gaza war made no mention whatsoever of the more than 24,000 Palestinians who have been killed in the war, mostly women and children. Biden’s decision to expand the war into the Red Sea last week was predictable in view of the naval deployments in the region, but it is unlikely to have any favorable impact on the actions and policies of Yemen and the Houthis. The U.S. and British attacks could lead to a wider war, however, that involves Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border. On January 16, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards launched missiles at an Israeli intelligence facility in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, not far from the U.S. consulate.

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“..There is, too, an unmistakable sense that Western leaders have become aware of their charade having been rumbled and of their imminent downfall..”

Gaza, Yemen & Ukraine Sound Death Knell for ‘Rules-Based World Order’ (SCF)

Whatever moral authority or superiority Western states may have presumed to have had in the past, all that is now shredded – irreparably. The hypocrisy and duplicity of the United States and its Western allies have been perceived for many years, indeed centuries. There is nothing new in that. But what is new now is how glaringly obvious to the world the fraudulent pretense has become. Global consciousness is, in turn, leading to global contempt. There is, too, an unmistakable sense that Western leaders have become aware of their charade having been rumbled and of their imminent downfall. This week saw British government ministers issuing desperate scaremongering warnings about global threats as a way to rally public support for their vanishing authority. In doing so, they just sound laughable.

Elsewhere this week, France’s President Emmanuel Macron delivered a bizarre nationwide address pleading for national unity amid global chaos. Macron sounded pathetic as if begging to be given respect. The irony is that the threats and chaos that these political charlatans adduce are largely the result of Western lawlessness, as evidenced by their de facto support for the genocide in Gaza and the relentless funding of a Neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine to provoke Russia. For decades, the Western powers have gotten away with mass murder, illegal wars, and global vandalism. The difference now is that a convergence of crises has exposed their malevolence and machinations. The slaughter in Gaza has exceeded 100 days and the death toll is approaching 30,000. It is the most transparent genocide in history, as Richard Falk deplores. And, what is more, the United States and its European allies are fully complicit in the shocking crimes committed by the Israeli regime.

Hospitals are shelled by the Israelis, medics and journalists are murdered, as are hungry people running to occasional food aid trucks. Unicef calls it a “war on children”. Up to 800,000 people in Gaza are reportedly facing starvation, and yet the arrogant Western powers do nothing to stop this annihilation nor even condemn it. The complacency and smugness of Western political leaders like U.S. President Joe Biden and his Secretary of State Antony Blinken are nauseating. The United States as well as the European Union are enabling and arming the Israeli regime with no restraint. Indeed, when South Africa presented its charges of genocide against Israel at the United Nations International Court of Justice at the Hague last week, it was apparent to the world that the U.S., Britain, and other European powers were de facto in the dock as well over their complicity.

Washington, London, and Brussels have pointedly refused to demand a ceasefire in Gaza under the guise of cynical excuses that recycle odious Israeli propaganda lies, such as the Palestinian militant group Hamas allegedly using human shields or hospitals as bases. Yet these Western powers turn around and suddenly bomb Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab region because it has taken the principled action of blocking Red Sea shipping as a leverage point to force a ceasefire in Gaza. The Yemenis are invoking their right under the 1948 Genocide Convention to act in solidarity to prevent the genocide of Palestinian people. Thus the Western powers are not only arming, enabling, and justifying the Israeli crimes in Gaza. When another party, Yemen, takes action to help the Palestinians, the Western powers double down on their criminality by assaulting Yemen.

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“..Tel Aviv has instituted a draconian siege on Palestinians in the Strip, cutting off access to water, electricity, and communications – and the essential crossings – for over 100 days now..”

Starving Gaza: Egypt and Israel’s Rafah Weapon (Cradle)

On a rainy morning, a group of Palestinian children gathered in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The gathering was not spontaneous, as children quickly began holding signs reading “Open the crossing.” Their plea was directed towards international organizations across the border in Egypt, conveyed through the signs as aid trucks stacked up, awaiting Egyptian permission to cross. As the kids roamed around the border fence, lunch was provided to EU observers and civil society staff, who gave up their meals to the children of Rafah. Now here’s the rub. Those placards were not addressed to Egypt. The crossing was not Rafah, but Gaza’s north-eastern Karni border point with Israel. And the incident took place in 2006, not in 2024. In 2006, Israel’s punishment to Palestinians for voting in Hamas during free and fair elections was starvation. This is Tel Aviv’s silent war, a siege that slowly claims its victims, depriving Gaza’s 2.3 million civilians of nourishment and medical relief.

Since the Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the Strip found itself under a tight blockade, transforming it into a massive open-air prison surrounded by wires and checkpoints. Eight crossings were controlled – six of these by Israel – connecting Gaza to the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948. Four of these crossings remained completely closed, and two were opened intermittently: “Beit Hanoun” and “Kerem Shalom.” Since Israel’s military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Tel Aviv has had a singular goal: to establish total hegemony over Gaza by land, air, and sea. To achieve its aims, three agreements were signed to regulate movement at the crossings: the Crossings Agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (2005), the Palestinian-European-Israeli border control agreement, and the Philadelphi Protocol between Egypt and Israel. The latter deal established a 14 km buffer strip along the Egypt-Gaza border and required Israeli–Egyptian security coordination, the presence of Egyptian border guards along the Philadelphi corridor, and security patrols from both sides.

The Rafah crossing was restricted to Palestinian ID card holders, with exceptions requiring prior notice to the Israeli government and approval from the highest PA authorities. The General Authority for Crossings in Gaza, under the PA, handled approvals and objections, with strict timelines set by the crossings agreement. However, tensions rose when Hamas took control of the crossing in 2007, leading to shifts in operations and closures based on the evolving relations between Egypt and Hamas. The dynamic changed in 2017 when rivals Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation agreement, aiming to end the persistent internal division. However Israel’s complete blockade on the Gaza Strip after the 7 October Hamas-led resistance operation elevated the significance of the Strip’s border crossings with Egypt.

Just a year earlier, the Rafah crossing had been open for 245 days and facilitated the passage of over 140,000 people and numerous essential goods such as diesel, cooking gas, and construction materials. Alongside its brutal, unprecedented, military assault on Gaza, Tel Aviv has instituted a draconian siege on Palestinians in the Strip, cutting off access to water, electricity, and communications – and the essential crossings – for over 100 days now. The Rafah crossing has become the sole lifeline for civilians seeking refuge from shelling, or receiving medical treatment or even a meal. While International organizations have flocked to provide aid through the crossing, mass displacement caused by indiscriminate Israeli bombardment – and Egyptian opposition to a resettlement plan in Sinai – have worsened the situation, leading to the emergence of a class of beneficiaries.

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“..a situation where “a country that absolutely does not meet any requirements” joins the EU is unacceptable..”

Letting Ukraine into NATO Is ‘Basis For World War Three’ – Fico (RT)

Bratislava will block Kiev’s bid to join the US-led NATO alliance and will stand by a decision to stop supplying weaponry to Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia, Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico has said. The PM made the remarks on Saturday ahead of his visit to Ukraine to meet his counterpart Denis Shmygal in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhgorod. Fico stressed that his visit serves solely “humanitarian” purposes and promised to openly communicate Bratislava’s stance to Kiev on different issues, including Ukraine’s potential accession to EU or NATO membership. “I will tell him that there are things on which we have completely different opinions,” Fico told broadcaster RTVS. “I will tell him that we respect them when it comes to joining the EU, but they must fulfill the conditions,” he added, explaining that a situation where “a country that absolutely does not meet any requirements” joins the EU is unacceptable.

He ruled out any possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, insisting such a move would only result in a global catastrophe, apparently caused by a direct collision between NATO and Russia over the issue. I will tell him that I will veto and block [a NATO bid by Ukraine] because that is exactly the basis of the third world war and nothing else.Fico also promised to reiterate to Shmygal his election campaign pledge to stop providing Kiev with weaponry, stating that the decision remains in force. Still, the weapons restriction applies only to state-sponsored military aid to Ukraine and supplies coming from Slovak military stocks, whereas arms manufacturers are free to sell to the country whatever they like, he noted.

“When Slovak companies don’t make money, American ones will,” Fico noted. Prior to Fico assuming office following his party’s electoral victory in September, Slovakia had been among Kiev’s top supporters, lavishly supplying it with sophisticated weaponry, including warplanes and anti-aircraft systems. The policy of the previous government has also left the country’s own defense posture badly damaged, new Defense Minister Robert Kalinak claimed earlier this week. “The former government left us without our own anti-aircraft defenses, without combat aviation, and we don’t even have the promised 700 million for MiGs, which the government also handed over to Ukraine,” Kalinak told the Standard newspaper.

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“..there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already begun..”

This Is Not Another ‘Phoney War’ (Patrick Lawrence)

Amid the tit-for-tats along Israel’s border with Lebanon over the past few weeks, the Houthis’ shelling of Red Sea traffic and repeated assertions that the U.S. does not want to widen the Gaza crisis into a regional war, I started thinking of that twilit interim in 1939–1940 known in history as “the phony war.” Has the world entered another such passage—another war we do not want to think is a war but is a war we do not want to see? That question seems far away now, an intellectual flinch. America, mindlessly loyal to the frothing dog known as Israel, has wandered into another war the way our president wanders away from podiums and off television news programs while the cameras are still rolling. This is a 21st century war, replete with attacks, denials, proxies and indirection, and with no formal declaration. But we may as well declare it ourselves so we understand our moment properly. America is once more at war.

The U.S. had for weeks refrained from responding to the Houthis, who, in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, have since November staged dozens of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships sailing through the Red Sea. These now include U.S. and British vessels and a U.S. warship. The Biden regime’s stated concern was that it did not want to risk sparking a conflict that would spread through the region and, in particular, provoke the Islamic Republic. The Pentagon, in the role of lumbering giant, also acknowledged that there was little U.S. forces could do to stop the Houthis’ operations. The weeks of restraint, so uncharacteristic of the Biden White House, ended last Thursday, when the U.S. and a handful of its clients hit more than two dozen Houthi targets—military bases, airports, weapons dumps—in Yemen. Air and naval units struck the Houthis again last Friday, and the world suddenly sat up straight. Here is part of a news analysis The New York Times published Friday evening:

“With the American-led strike on nearly 30 sites in Yemen on Thursday and a smaller strike the next day, there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already begun. The biggest questions now are the conflict’s intensity and whether it can be contained. This is exactly the outcome no one wanted, presumably including Iran.” Among the reporters bylined on this piece was David Sanger, a longtime Washington correspondent who is, to keep this polite, very close to the national- security state and faithfully reflects its perspectives. I certainly sat up straight on reading these paragraphs. They struck me as the Biden regime’s first admission, an early warning, that war was on the way. “I will not hesitate,” President Biden had said by the time Sanger et al. published, “to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

Indeed, U.S. attacks on Houthi targets are now something close to routine. On Tuesday the Pentagon announced that Navy SEAL commandos had raided an Iranian vessel bound for Yemen and seized missile components from its cargo. As of Monday evening (East Coast time, Tuesday morning in the Middle East), Biden and his policy people have exactly what they have insisted they do not want but which Israel probably does. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the IRGC, launched at least 11 ballistic missiles into northern Iraq and Syria, where all sorts of U.S. proxies, including the Islamic State, are active. I do not think there is any longer any stepping back from the reality that the U.S. is now in a regional war involving Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

Read more …

Close the border.

Top Biden Aides: Ukraine Will Lose in Weeks or Months Without Aid (Sp.)

The United States has already spent more than $113 billion providing military and other aid to Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly warned that aid will only serve to prolong the conflict and any cargo entering Ukraine will be considered a legitimate military target. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers during a private meeting that Russia could win the conflict in Ukraine in a matter of weeks or months if Congress does not approve additional aid for the Kiev regime, US media reported on Friday. According to two people familiar with the meeting, via US media, the two high-ranking aides said that Ukraine will soon run out of air defense missiles and lose its artillery capabilities. One White House official described the description as “incredibly stark.”

In December, the US announced that it had allocated the last tranche of aid to Ukraine that has been approved by Congress.”We have given now Ukraine the last security assistance package that we have funds to support right before New Year’s, right after Christmas. And we’ve got to get support from Congress so we can continue to do that,” Sullivan told reporters at the time.Ukraine is facing more than a funding crisis, it is also facing a lack of personnel on the frontline. It was reported in Western media outlets last fall that the average age of a Ukrainian soldier had increased to 43 years. It also lifted restrictions on female soldiers, putting them into machine gunner, tank commander and other frontline roles. Even with its air defense operational, Russia has shown its capability to hit targets all over the country.

Still, an influx of military aid for Ukraine could prolong the conflict longer, resulting in more deaths. For months, US President Joe Biden has demanded that Congress pass an additional $60 billion in aid, which would be the largest single package sent to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation. While the US Senate has at times seemed ready to pass a compromise funding bill that would include Biden’s request, House Republicans have steadfastly blocked it, demanding significant border security reforms that most Democrats would have difficulty selling to their voter base. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is insisting that a border bill include stronger border barriers and reforms to make it easier to arrest and deport asylum seekers and undocumented migrants already living in the United States.

“We’re not insistent upon a particular name of a piece of legislation, but we are insistent that the elements have to be meaningful,” Speaker Johnson told reporters after the White House and Senate Democrats said they planned to reject a House-passed border bill. “We understand that there’s concern about the safety, security, sovereignty of Ukraine, but the American people have those same concerns about our own domestic sovereignty, and our safety and our security,” he added. There have also been signs of cracks behind the scenes between Ukraine and its biggest benefactor. In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky skipped a planned speech to the US Senate during which he was scheduled to make his pitch to lawmakers on why they should authorize more aid. When he finally did deliver a speech to lawmakers, on December 22, only 86 of 213 House Republicans showed for the speech and it was reported that those who did attend and were against the aid did not appear convinced.

Read more …

“..the sum of money allocated to Ukraine is to say the least a very little part” of the US military budget.”

Ukraine Openly Asks West To Use Its Army As A Proxy (RT)

The cost of supporting the Ukrainian troops as a proxy force against Russia is miniscule compared to the overall US budget, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said in Davos, arguing that such a security investment benefits the US military industrial complex. Unlike other US “allies,” Kiev is not even asking for American troops on the ground, Kuleba argued in an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We kind of offer the best deal on the global market of security… Give us the weapons, give us the money, and we will finish the job,” Kuleba stated. “So you save the most important, you save the lives of your soldiers.” The Ukrainian diplomat also claimed that Kiev “does not steal any money from American taxpayers,” arguing that “the sum of money allocated to Ukraine is to say the least a very little part” of the US military budget.

“Moreover, a vast amount of this money stays in the United States because it is invested in the production of weapons that go then to Ukraine,” he told reporters, adding that “it needs to be explained to the American taxpayers that their communities benefit from it.” Russia has estimated that Kiev has received more than $203 billion in foreign assistance since the outbreak of the conflict. The US alone has sent Kiev over $75 billion, including more than $45 billion in direct military aid, representing 5% of the Pentagon’s proposed 2024 budget. Moscow has also repeatedly accused the US and its allies of using the Ukraine crisis to wage a “proxy war” against Russia and turning the battlefield into a testing ground for Western military equipment. Even the Pentagon and a former UK defense secretary have referred to Ukraine as a “battle lab” and a “military innovation laboratory.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry has described Kiev’s losses throughout the conflict as catastrophic, estimating that the Ukrainian military has lost nearly 400,000 troops – killed and wounded – since February 2022, including over 160,000 during its failed counteroffensive last year. Kiev has never officially disclosed its casualty figures, but the heavy losses have been indirectly corroborated by its ever-widening mobilization effort. Late last year, President Vladimir Zelensky claimed the country’s military had asked him to round up another 500,000 recruits to bolster the ranks, although a new mobilization bill has yet to be passed.

Read more …

“..But the legal ethics rules are designed to avoid gunslinging generally and ambiguity specifically..”

The Many Faces Of Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s Financial Patron (Turley)

“Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.” Those words by author Milan Kundera could well have been written for Kevin Morris, a critical figure in the unfolding Hunter Biden scandal.

Morris was largely unknown to most people until he emerged as the Democratic donor who reportedly paid Hunter Biden millions to handle his unpaid taxes and maintain his lavish lifestyle. The Hollywood lawyer and producer portrayed himself as a good Samaritan on a biblical scale — a good man who simply found a desperate stranger on the road and gave him more than $5 million. His counsel, Bryan M. Sullivan stated that “Hunter is not only a client of Kevin’s, he is his friend and there is no prohibition against helping a friend in need, despite the inability of these Republican chairmen and their allies to imagine such a thing.” The statement captures the problem for Morris. It is increasingly hard to determine what Morris was at any given moment: Democratic donor, lawyer, friend. Indeed, that problem that some of us have raised for months.

Lawyers are not supposed to pay the bills of their clients. Specifically, California Bar Rule 1.8.5(a) states that “[a] lawyer shall not directly or indirectly pay or agree to pay, guarantee, or represent that the lawyer or lawyer’s law firm will pay the personal or business expenses of a prospective or existing client.” They are required to maintain clear representational boundaries. This is also now the subject of a new bar complaint filed by a conservative legal group this week. Friends have described Morris as a “rule-breaker” and admit that his relationship with Hunter raises eyebrows. “Certainly it’s not careful, but he’s a gunslinger,” one told the Los Angeles Times. “This is how he rolls.” But the legal ethics rules are designed to avoid gunslinging generally and ambiguity specifically.

Hunter calls him both his lawyer and his “brother.” Lead counsel Abbe Lowell observed, “I have never in any of my representations of any other client — other than someone who is an immediate family member of one of my clients — known anyone who is like Kevin.” When the relationship began, Morris was playing the role of loyal Democratic donor. He was introduced to Hunter at a 2019 political fundraiser by another producer and Democratic deep pocket, Lanette Phillips. Soon thereafter, Morris was giving Hunter copious amounts of money and legal advice. That would include reportedly paying off Hunter’s long-delinquent taxes before criminal charges were filed. It also included paying for Hunter’s lavish lifestyle.

Morris may be most eager to avoid the label “democratic donor” because these payments could be viewed as an unreported campaign donation. Morris was brought in during Joe Biden’s campaign for president. Then, on February 7, 2020, Morris flagged how the taxes represented a “considerable risk personally and politically.” He seems to have sought to resolve that political liability by paying off the taxes and calling it a “loan.” Those “loans” would continue, and Morris insists that it was all standard “loan” stuff. Except he is not a bank. He was repeatedly referring to Hunter as his “client.” It is also important that these millions are treated as loans because, if they are actually gifts, they could create a new tax problem. Hunter has to declare such “gifts.” Few would view Hunter as a good risk for a loan, given his history of stiffing a wide array of businesses and associates. Indeed, he reportedly even faced a complaint over failure to pay for alleged high-end prostitutes. He was even accused of using a credit card connected to his father to pay off an alleged Russian call-girl. Even the art dealer who recently sold Hunter’s art reportedly testified that Hunter never reimbursed him for the costs of the shows.

That art adds an interesting twist to the mysterious role of Morris. Recently, art dealer Georges Bergès blew away White House claims that Hunter had been barred from knowing the names of purchasers under a comprehensive ethics system. He admitted that Hunter knew the identity of 70 percent of the purchasers. It was not hard. Despite news reports of buyers flocking to buy the art, it turns out it was largely Morris who bought the art. Notably, however, Morris only reportedly paid Bergès’ 40 percent commission on the $875,000 purchases. It is not clear whether Morris used the sales to wipe out part of the loan debt. That would be a clever way to treat the money as a loan, if it were used for that purpose. You simply have Hunter crank out dubious pieces of art and arrange for an ally to throw art shows in New York. You then have media allies write how buyers were “floored” by Hunter’s talent.

Read more …

Scholz is on his way out.

A New Party Is Reshaping The German Political Landscape (Amar)

Germany is in severe crisis. Between a tanking economy and an increasingly unpopular government, the country has begun to show just how much stress it is under. Half a year ago, the head of German carmaker Volkswagen warned that “the roof is on fire,” while The Economist concluded that “disaster,” meaning not just the decline but collapse of the German car industry, is “no longer inconceivable.” At this moment, the wintry beginning of 2024, German farmers are staging large-scale and escalating protests and forcing the ruling coalition into concessions, the trains are not running on time due to a strike, the country’s wholesale sector has dropped to pandemic-level pessimism, “dampening hopes of a rapid rebound in Europe’s largest economy,” as reported by Bloomberg, residential property prices are in record decline, and the office real estate market “has collapsed,” according to leading German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The Economist finds Germany to be “down” politically as well – in fact, self-relegated – from its status as leader of Europe (or, at least, the EU) to less than second fiddle (that would be France, perhaps): while “Angela Merkel was the continent’s undoubted leader, Olaf Scholz, has not taken on her mantle.” That is a very British understatement. In reality, in the toxic yet key relationship with the US, Germany, with its hapless attempt to transfer the management concept of “servant leadership” to geopolitics, has now subordinated itself so thoroughly to American neocon-type interests that it has no leverage left at all. Because once you make your loyalty unconditional, you will be taken for granted: Selling oneself may be inevitable for any but the greatest powers. Selling oneself for free takes a special lack of foresight. We could go on heaping up examples of malaise. But the gist is simple: Germans may love to lay it on thick when it comes to venting their misery and “angst” (I should know, being German), but, clearly, something has to – and will – give. The question is what. One political force that stands to gain from the crisis has just been established. (Another fairly new party that is profiting is the AfD.)

Long rumored and in the making, 8 January saw the official founding of a new party, the Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit (Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht – Reason and Justice), or BSW for short. Its leader Sarah Wagenknecht used to be the most popular top politician of the hard-Left party Die Linke, which she left with a bang. As the name BSW suggests, the new party is, in part, a vehicle for Wagenknecht’s considerable personal political acumen and charisma. Opponents of “Red Sarah,” as the popular, generally right-leaning newspaper Bild still calls her, like to stereotype her as an “icon.” Yet, wiser from the failure of an earlier attempt to strike out on her own (under the label “Aufstehen,” roughly: “Stand Up”), this time, Wagenknecht has gone out of her way and made sure to do her homework, preparing a well-crafted organization, a set of junior leaders around her, and, last but not least, a solid program. This is politically significant: Unlike “Aufstehen,” the BSW will not fold quickly under the weight of its own problems.

On the contrary, the party’s chances of making a strong impact from the get-go are very good, as polls consistently indicate. The most recent one – commissioned by Bild and carried out just days after the party’s founding by a top pollster – shows that 14% of Germans would vote for the BSW in a federal election. For comparison: the SPD, traditionally one of the core parties of Germany and the political home of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reaches 14% as well. For the BSW this is an impressive figure, but for the SPD it is catastrophic. Meanwhile the Greens, the second partner in Berlin’s governing “Ampel” coalition, are at 12%. The FDP, the third “Ampel” component, would fail to get any seats at all (due to not crossing Germany’s electoral threshold of 5%). Sarah Wagenknecht’s own former party, Die Linke, would suffer the same fate. The only two parties that would do better than the BSW are the traditional center-right CDU (27%) and the populist-right/far-right AfD (18%).

Read more …

The man who would be Putin.

The Last Cut For Alexei Kudrin Is The Deepest (Helmer)

Alexei Kudrin – the state finance factotum President Vladimir Putin promoted for his entire federal government career until in the war against the Ukraine and the US the president couldn’t protect him any longer — has lost his half-billion dollar payoff. Kudrin’s long-held ambition to succeed Putin in the Kremlin with US backing ends with the oligarchs and state bankers about to take over Yandex and cutting Kudrin’s stake in the deal by at least two percent and several hundred million dollars. This last cut is not only the deepest for Kudrin: the oligarchs and bankers are making public this week that Putin is not protecting Kudrin any longer. Yandex, the dominant Russian internet company once controlled by the Israeli exile, Arkady Volozh, is now undergoing a process of state takeover to protect it from Volozh’s allies in the US and NATO, and to reprivatize it in the hands of the state bankers VTB and the Russian Direct Investment Fund and a group of oligarchs; they are rivalling each other, led by Vladimir Potanin of Norilsk Nickel and Vagit Alekperov of LUKoil.

Volozh has lost control of Yandex because of his attacks on the Russian war against the US and NATO on the Ukrainian battlefield, because he fled to Israel, and because he is a cyber security risk to Russia. Notwithstanding, Putin has been conciliatory and protective. “He lives in Israel, and I can imagine that, to live a good and prosperous life there and have good relations with authorities, he has to make certain statements. He had been silent for a long time before he decided to make a statement. God grant him health and may he live well there. Frankly speaking, we are not particularly bothered by what he said. But in general, if a person grew up on this soil, got an education and became successful, he should have some respect for the country that gave him everything. I am not referring to Volozh – he is a gifted person who created a really good company and handpicked a team – I am not referring to him, but in general. Yes, one can imagine that a person does not agree with what the current authorities are doing. Do they have the right to express their views? By all means. But there are quite a few fine points here.”

“We can side with our geopolitical adversaries and play along with them, thus damaging our country’s interests, or we can act otherwise. There are many nuances here. People decide for themselves who they are. Do they have a sense of national identity? Or do they prefer to mimic and feel like someone else, not a Russian person born in the Soviet Union? A person makes their own choices.” At the same time as Putin was saying this, he had agreed to a scheme for breaking up Yandex into its Russian asset and foreign asset holdings, neutralizing Volozh’s power in Russia. To prevent the scheme from turning into a renationalisation by the state, Putin appointed Kudrin as his overseer. Kudrin’s payment for this was to be so large that Moscow sources suspected it was intended to become a political fund to finance Kudrin’s bid for the succession to Putin after his re-election in March of this year. Depending on the value of the final transactions, that might have been as large as $1.5 billion or as little as $375 million.

At peak, when it was listed in New York, the Yandex group had a market capitalization of almost $30 billion; Volozh’s worth, reported by Forbes US, peaked at $2.3 billion. After delisting on the New York Stock Exchange and trading freeze on Nasdaq as the special military operation began, Yandex’s share value has dropped to $6.9 billion on the Moscow Stock Exchange this week. At this price, Kudrin stands to earn no more than $104 million – a premium retirement pension collectable in roubles, but a tupik politically (deadend).

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Meteorite
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Sowell

 

 

NetZero

 

 

Trick shots

 

 


Elasmotherium, a large rhinoceros genus, existed in Eurasia from the Late Miocene to the Late Pleistocene, with the latest confirmed dates approximately 39,000 years ago.

 

 

Reversed roles

 

 

Treehouse

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle January 21 2024

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 51 total)
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  • #150844

    Rembrandt van Rijn The Three Crosses 1653   • Commissioner Requests Fani Willis Produce Info On ‘Misuse’ Of County Funds (DC) • Fani Willis Hande
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 21 2024]

    #150845
    oxymoron
    Participant

    sorry but Rachael Maddow just looks like a completely insane person with a MASSIVE ego problem.
    ew
    sucks to be her

    #150846
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Senior NATO Official Says There Will Be a Hot War with Russia”

    Not if you collapse and are defunded first.

    “NATO will launch its biggest military exercises in decades next week with around 90,000 personnel set to take part”

    They’ll be using nerf guns and barbie cars because they have no tanks, shells, ships, or ammunition.

    “’I’m Perfectly Healthy,’ Says Joe Biden Through A Medium At A Séance” –Bbee.

    The kicker? That’s a gag from 2021. They need him to get past primary — by erasing all the other candidates, illegally — so that they can then air-drop in unpopular, inappropriate choices like Mike and Newsom. Very soon now.

    “Over half-a-dozen rounds of airstrikes haven’t deterred Houthis at this point…”

    SIX whole airstrikes? On a country of 204,000sq miles? Be still my heart. Boy that larned ’em. If we don’t look out there’ll be half as many deaths there as any weekend in Chicago.

    “Advocates Outraged That Feds Asked Banks To Search Customers’ ‘Religious Texts’ Purchases

    Freedom of religion: you’re free to be any religion you want, as long as it’s ours. Nihilistic atheism.

    Thinking: okay, “bond sale auctions are failing.” “Powell” is raising rates to cover (really following the 1 year). They are pilfering many places, wars in Europe, to get people to flee here to our “Safety”. This is trying to be stable and buy time for repairs. (We saw this from ‘08 where sadly our banks took the billions and ended up repaired and better shape than Europe e.g. Same thing with banks holding Bonds right now.)

    BUT: what usually happens in these cases? And remember, the crisis may HAPPEN from raising rates, but we only see the outside, visible effects after they LOWER rates. That is, the Fed raises until something breaks, as insiders, they can see that thing break before you do, and lower rates just as it hits the news. In fact, as “The Big Short” just refuse to let any chart, any company, any reporting they wish, just say the #Opposite. For a year and who knows how long now?

    Okay, what is a “Crisis”? They raise rates until “A Crisis”. For us and Senators, that would be the Stock market. But why? 1) Cut off easy money speculation – although their only purpose is to print money and hand it to their friends, it would be self-defeating to cause hyperinflation and end the party. Priority 2 is to prevent this. (Priority 1 is to steal and control)

    But also IF there is a crisis, THEN they have to save the BOND market or nothing else matters. There will BE no economy, and in fact no United States. Or at the least the whole system we live under will be completely unrecognizable and all the present power-people will be bankrupted and displaced. THE FED EXISTS TO STOP THIS. They are chartered as the “Bank of last resort”.

    So again: why do they save the 10x bond market over the 1x Stock market? Because the Stock Market is irrelevant and can collapse. The Dow dropped in half, twice, and it wasn’t really a crisis, not like ‘32. Nasdaq dropped from 5k to 1k? And didn’t make a blip? And they’ve been savaging REAL companies, real capital creation in the Russell 2000 for decades and no problems?

    So what’s the point here?

    IF THE BOND MARKET AUCTIONS FAIL, THEY WILL CRASH THE STOCK MARKETS.

    Not “IT” will crash the stock markets, I mean, POWELL will call the ESF on the phone at Treasury and tell them to stop pumping in $1B/day and levitating it with market manipulation. …Or some proximity thereof. The Dow crashing will drive every free dollar on the planet into BONDS, saving them. …Or rather, every ANGLO dollar on the planet. The world is rotating away from us.

    I’ve predicted 100 of the last 2 crashes, so don’t take my advice, but I did predict those two crashes. Just looking at the plumbing here. 1) IF bond auctions are failing – and they are, and they’re getting worse daily as we lose everywhere, steal everything, and our “Full faith and trust” collapses – 2) THEN what did they all do last time?

    Bush played the war card, that’s already on the table everywhere. Bernank already played the bailout card, we’re probably printing more monthly than the original $700B we told Congress not to do. And that leaves what? Where do you find enough money to steal to keep this going? “THIS” being “the Bond market”? Mostly USTs but Exxon will collapse without bonds too.

    Well, we saw they want to steal trillions in Carbon Credits. Stopped. They want to direct all existing billions to pals in ESG. Stopped. They wanted to steal Syria. Stopped. They wanted to steal Venuzuela. Stopped. They wanted to steal Hong Kong and Taiwan. Stopped. They moved on to larger countries, and wanted to steal Ukraine. Stole their gold, buying a few years, but stopped. They wanted to steal Russia, then settle for Russia’s $600B. Stopped. They wanted to sell off Ukraine a nation the size of France at 1,000:1 leverage. Stopped. They were running it through Afghan heroin. Stopped. They were getting money in human trafficking. Pivoted to Mexico, but slowed down and inadequate worldwide.

    And that leaves what? Who has a loose Trillion lying around you can steal in seconds? Break glass in case of emergency?

    Bitcoin has $1-2Trillion. And the Dow. Which is now 5 stocks, floating on nothing but the firehose money.

    So if you need money, where do you steal it from, “Direct” it from, into Bonds? Yeah.

    Commercial Real Estate and the Banking system are both wiped out. They only exist on accounting fraud by not pricing their books. That means they only exist on money fire hose “bailouts” (Velocity). But that level of printing in a collapse causes hyperinflation, and you can’t cure hyperinflation with a money fire hose. Or Blarney. Because “Hyper” inflation as opposed to “High” inflation is by definition a loss of faith in institutions, governments, and loss of faith in what they say. More lies don’t win there.

    How do you get them to have “Faith” in US$ at least for a while?

    Cut everything else in price 90%. You printed money for 10+ years and slowly stashed it in Tesla. Now smash the bank, drain the kitty to pay the rent and survive. See?

    ““The Blob”, needs to keep feeding on fresh assets.” — John Day

    And assets of the right size — COLLATERAL — has dried up. They already monetized your wife, your friends, and the babysitter in Google Apps, what’s left?

    “Trump just got the entire media to finally admit Nancy Pelosi was in charge of security on Jan 6”

    Cat laser! Sharpiegate! Took a while. He finally found a way to make them, and make them feel superior doing it.

    Commissioner Requests Fani Willis Produce Info on ‘Misuse’ of County Funds (DC)

    Rules and Norms Based Order. This level of corruption is industry standard for D.A.s coast to coast, and certainly in DoJ. What’s the problem? Why you suddenly mad? She’s about as self-aware and “Public minded” as that DUI yesterday. “C’mon! What’s $650,000 taxpayer dollars between friends?” It’s not as if they’re letting regular serial felons go free to prey on the rest of the county or anything. Oh they are? The time on this means a hundred violent cases were dropped and deferred? Well, just following “Industry Standard” NYC!

    “They claimed that they believed President Trump engaged in an insurrection against the U.S. government despite him having not been … charged

    Top of the class! The Norms of Harvard Law, Yale, and the goat f—ers of Rutgers! Everyone is guilty who not only wasn’t convicted, but was never even charged!

    “the Supreme Court justices should factor in his strong poll numbers and recent win in the Iowa caucuses.”

    I don’t think this is relevant at all. However, if they did nothing it would be GREAT since it would expose the Supreme Court as the sham it’s come to be.

    “ What Are “They” Afraid That a “Dictator”/President Trump Might Do? (VDH)

    See the cartoon above. Now what hoaxes would he every need to seek retribution for? They’ve all been so squeaky clean.

    “The Dangerous Myth of the “Indispensable Nation” (Goodman)

    Goodman is all wrong here. We’ve been of two minds since before the Revolution. Empire (Rome) or Democracy (Greece). It’s so clear you can see it in our architecture. He’s conflating a fully-defensive brushfire (1812) with an expansive war to gain colonies (Spain, 1898). It was not at the beginning, because Washington set the tone, Adams was nearly removed over it, and JQ Adams re-affirms our neutrality again a generation later. In contrast Jefferson was the one promoting world-wide revolution of the Brotherhood of Man, Trotsky-style, in France which he was going to sink and destroy us with, but failed. As the F. Revolution unfolded you could see how right the American isolationists were. (again). You can see how right they were following the Philippines, which is so bad and so demonstrative, it’s completely purged from all American schools and history. We won the Spanish colonies for what?

    And then it took 220 years for us to reach the psychotic level of Albright, our modern Ribbentrop, and was then, and is even now resisted by the same elements as 1770, 1790, 1812, 1840, 1914, 1939, 1963, 2016 and others. Congress leaving Ukraine is a testament to our tireless resistance to Empire. I mean, without us, England wouldn’t be able to go around the world blowing things up! By, you know, “Pointing” and then, you know, “Hiding.” Keeping both carriers home with no planes and no sailors. We’re at a 200-year landmark here and may change enough to finally settle this issue.

    “The Yemenis are invoking their right under the 1948 Genocide Convention to act in solidarity to prevent the genocide of Palestinian people.”

    Good point. Sinking ships could actually be plausibly legal then, although which court would say so.

    ““I will tell him that we respect them when it comes to joining the EU, but they must fulfill the conditions,”

    They’re still talking as if the EU exists. It doesn’t. When Germany leaves, there is no EU, as the EU was a project of final German conquest of all Europe and especially Greece. This was set up to create MacKinder, and keep the “World Island” from unifying and overwhelming Oceana. Even WWI was on that point, as it happened as soon as Germany and Turkey finished their railroad, going around the British Water Empire and looking all-East. “And Then a Miracle Happened” and BOTH Germany AND Russia had bad luck. What are the chances!?!

    And now? Do you see the slightest chance that Germany won’t go East, now or eventually? AND THAT’S ALL THANKS TO BRITAIN and the Anglos who MADE them with their stupid, stupid plans. Germany would have been in the middle, the EU would have taken the bank, and Russia would be a “normal” country – part of NATO even – but Noooooooooo!
    No-tink
    http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/166/089/485.jpg

    So tell me, and it is hazy: do you see any other POSSIBLE outcome here, over the 30-year scale? And again, no Germany = No EU although obviously Europe will exist, they will have decayed, got wildly poorer, but WILL be working for a living, in small factories at last. With that collapse, all the Global South will go back to Nigeria to get fabulously wealthy, and leave Sweden alone, although possibly with some “helping” to get-r-gone along the way. But wtf would you be in Sweden if you’re not a Swede? It’s cold and dark there: Good way to get killed. The beaches of Ethiopia and Cote d’Ivorie are far nicer.

    “A New Party Is Reshaping The German Political Landscape (Amar)

    Probably the Milei/Ramaswamy Hope-and-Change Party, but it hardly matters. Germany will do this or they will die, as they are dying now. I know this seems like nothing to the rest of us, but the German farmers pissed off, heckled, harassed, and back-talked any authority that showed there, including their Finance Minister. When the Media reported they were Nazis, the farmers told them to GFY. That is NOT GERMAN. It means THE END. …Similar support top to toe that the Canadian Truckers got. It’s now an Occupying, Enemy, Colonial Government, and that won’t last long, as it didn’t in Holland either, although being orderly, they took it one step at a time, first via election. Good on ’em.

    ““…there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already begun..”

    Yes, list the events and their military damage each day. It would be a page-long bulletin even at a high level. Like we don’t know history. At all. We are entirely and stupidly illiterate. The Nazis were the National Soooooocialists. And the level of deaths even on the bad months of WWII were equal to the war in Ukraine EVERY DAY of the last TWO YEARS, and we act like “that’s not a war”. No, it’s a BIGGER war than WWII, because WWII had the same deaths over 4x the territory. We just think it didn’t because time compresses the past. All those stupid movies make it seem larger-than-life.

    So turning to the Middle East, it’s possible there have been more daily deaths since Oct 7, and involving more countries, than during WWII. Likely in fact. But we Yanks still think we’re just goofing off and will never get a black eye for it. And even very close places like France and Italy act the same. Even as they send, apparently, in-uniform French regulars to attack Russia?

    Okay man. There’s 3x as many people on the planet as 1940, but okay.

    ““Moreover, a vast amount of this money stays in the United States because it is invested in the production of weapons that go then to Ukraine,”

    Or DOESN’T reach weapons, ask FTX. But in theory we “wasted” $2 TRILLION since 912 on wars? EVERY DOLLAR went to the same public interest group and cartel. And you wonder why they’re stronger? Like Ike said? Same now.

    “He seems to have sought to resolve that political liability by paying off the taxes and calling it a “loan.” Those “loans” would continue,”

    Yeah, just try to sell the IRS on a “Loan” that has no term and no interest, that’s all traded for favors, and see what happens. Oh, wait…

    Russia’s Google: “Yandex, the dominant Russian internet company once controlled by the Israeli exile,”

    All you need to know.

    “Yes, one can imagine that a person does not agree with what the current authorities are doing. Do they have the right to express their views? By all means.”

    Obviously what all dictators say. Like Nikki Hillary and the WEF.

    “”Temperatures went up first, and then there was the increase in carbon dioxide. You can’t say that A causes B if B happens first…

    More, I heard and wanted to double-check that they went up first by 800 YEARS. And where did our Global Warming advocates go again? Every time you bring up data they scatter like roaches in the light. Science is discussing data, is it not? Discuss.

    “Elasmotherium, a large rhinoceros genus”

    Speaking of Science, again with the levels of oxygen, and even gravity that makes this possible.

    That guy really, really needs to use lighter materials. And it’ll damage all those trees. Everything he has is from a box store.

    These guys do a bunch https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnadpeGdTxD9oAbeZcYKiGO7p3gIXmuZ
    But they’re very popular right now. Like birds the humans are flocking.

    Does somebody want to tell me wtf “Disease X” is? So we have a disease, and we’re naming it, but it doesn’t exist yet? Like, no idea if it’s virus or bacteria, air or surface, rich or poor, green or yellow? Might be leprosy, might be chicken pox, who knows????

    Okay HOW do you have a disease you don’t actually have yet?

    I Dare you to name a thing more important than diversity! A: Eating? Which we get by doing “work”? So both work, eating, and everything else is more important than Diversity. I can live with very very little diversity, knowing nobody but my own cousins on the Rez, but you can’t live without “work”.

    #150847
    Dora
    Participant

    This is an old Joe Rogan show with guest Randall Carlson. I started the clip at the point where they are talking about ancient climate ice core records and climate changes in the last two thousand years. Watching for 10-15 minutes is enough to get the ideas. The entire show is loong.

    #150848
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    #150849
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Oh Martha, Vengeance is Yours

    .

    Same for You Too Killary

    .

    Best Diplomat in the World Believes in Patience and the Slow Burn

    .

    .

    #150850
    Oroboros
    Participant

    “Israel should not think that the suffering of Jews during World War II gives it free rein in foreign policy, particularly when it comes to the hostilities in Gaza, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.…”

    “The Holocaust doesn’t give Israel impunity”

    – Lavrov.

    #150851
    Oroboros
    Participant

    #150852
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Nikki Haleys Infidelities Aren’t Really Meaningful: Her Warmongering Is

    #150853
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “ The Fix is In – Trump Goes to Prison” — Armstrong

    …Unless he has a small plane crash instead. His own “Q” team has said so, for whatever that’s worth.

    “George Soros’ son has come out and said that Trump would not go away unless he is in prison. I am not at liberty to say at this time, but the FIX IS IN and Trump will be imprisoned in the Washington, DC case.” — Armstrong. Who is, remember, a billionaire (or manages billions) who talks to billionaires all day. A Guy called in for consulting on everything, including LTCM, the Euro, and W. Bush.

    I have had to look at these forecasts projected by the computer, and it is certainly not my aspiration in life. …No protest can be mustered to prevent this. We have to crash and burn. Only then will the blind finally see, and those who have understood these forecasts will get to perhaps spread the word.”

    Yes, nothing will wake and motivate them. Why? Haven’t we already tried everything else? Like every other time in history, this is what it takes. Like, what warning did we not give?

    These people are so desperate to impose their totalitarian state that they refuse to back off. If they cannot imprison Trump, they will assassinate him.” — Armstrong

    Nikki
    https://theautomaticearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Nooses.jpg

    But did you think we’d put down Empire for less, when every one of their side could be hung? After what we’ve done to the world, we’re just going to walk around and walk away? Yeah: NO.

    Armstrong continues: “World War III is already in motion. There will be no state of peace,”
    (P.S. “At this time, Russian soldiers outnumber Ukrainians 4 to 1.)

    “Trump would indeed end the war in 24 hrs. Cut off all funds for the Ukrainian government employees whom Biden is paying their salaries and pensions. Insist that Zelensky honors the Minsk Agreement and the war is over. Those in power right now want war, and they have no intention of ending anything.”

    …Because they’d be hung. The system would crash and we’d all point to them, and start looking at felonies. With the money cut off, their blackmail would fail and they couldn’t hire hit men to fix it.

    “The Computer Says Trump Will Win
    Personally, I Cannot See How They Will Allow a Fair Election with that Result.”

    They won’t. There won’t be an election.

    We need that level of screw-up to wake people up this is “not normal”. And the only way it ends is to cut off the money, which is the same as saying “A Crash”.

    What does “Crash”, Uni-Crash mean? Suppose US$ goes parity with the Yuan? 8:1? That’s about right for our situation and is a good start toward fairly market-pricing us. It would cut off the money and correct the Boomers n Billionaires nicely (Depressions actually DROP income disparity) but not stop all commerce and kill everyone. Yes, lots suffer, but Millennials and Zeds have WORK. Some work years remain for them. Yes, wages won’t 10x but stocks sure will be cheap! And houses. Student loans drop 10x. It works out. Xers are F’d up the A, they have neither riches now NOR work years, but I’m sure they’re used to it. Who cares about them? No one ever has before, what’s new?

    If Yuan goes 10:1 which is BARELY more appropriate, and Congress, Federal funding collapses to a Libertarian wet dream, killing Central Power, what happens to Stocks? Crash, but then slowly recovers according to their productive capacity and not fire-hose popularity. Bonds? Stable but you want to make 3% when you just lost 90%? Some will “delay” payment, i.e. “Default”.

    Gold? As China has it, a revaluation would probably remain stable. Say the re-valuation 2x for safety and new interest. 8x $2,000 = $16,000 x 2 = $20-30,000. That’s about right on Jim Sinclair and the historical norms. But gold will flop around and be sold to $880 at first as everyone panics for liquidity. Silver will 4x gold? It moves faster and farther, then crashes harder. It’s not at a previous 1979 high, which is beyond ludicrous. Imagine buying a new Cadillac for $7,000. (They were $15k in 1980 and silver is half its high.) So…$5,000 silver? For a few weeks when there’s no market and no one can find the price? That sounds impossible, but has happened many times, viz palladium. Viz silver from $1 to $50.

    And Bitcoin? Then the same thing. Crashes as a mania as everyone sells for liquidity, then recovers according to the revaluation. 10x $46,000 = $500k? …Eventually…

    If we lose every war and have no election, why WOULDN’T this happen? I’ll wait. Remember, Europe has no army. They use ours. So if WE have no army, lost, and are too busy, Europe DEFINITELY won’t. They will DEFINITELY lose Ukraine right to the border and probably all the Eastern Bloc before too long as they pivot East to the money, away from the blackmail, not that they’re conquered. All their banks? Which depend on their collateral and OUR army?

    This is what happened when they decided to hire John Wick and not raise an army and fight for themselves.

    Right
    http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/166/089/485.jpg

    It’s already over, but I said that two years ago when the center of gravity had already moved. When it’s a planet, a center of gravity can’t just flop around. When it shifted to Patriots and away from Empire, it may have moved slowly, but it never reversed. Not now either. A center of gravity of planets can move quite a lot before you see anything, the final shoulder throw, but that’s the moment it happens.

    Center of gravity has also moved socially, in the U.S. but also worldwide. They’ve caved and are already staging puppet shows with Milei and at Davos. But that means even they have thrown in the towel.

    Full Faith and Confidence, Folks.

    #150854
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    .

    #150855
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    .

    #150856

    Jeff Sommer writes in the business section of the NYT today (paper edition):
    “Imagine if you had been wise enough to put $1,000 into the index fund [S&P] on its first day in 1976 and to have been patient enough to have let your pot of money grow through November [of this year]. Your $1,000 would have increased by $16,145,400. That’s not an error.”
    I have found the calculator he must have used! Type in fun numbers and see how rich you are!
    (There appears to be a problem in the “additional contribution” section. Leave it at 0.00 and keep it at monthly. Is this the calculator .gov uses?)

    #150857
    Oroboros
    Participant

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    .

    #150858
    WES
    Participant

    Yes, I would like to see the total mess the raccoons made of the tree house on the first night he wasn’t there!

    #150859
    WES
    Participant

    MPSK:

    The S & P index, just like the Dow index, has seen companies go (losers) and replaced with new companies (winners).

    Much more likely, you would have been throughly fleeced by Wall Street.

    Instead you would own nothing and not be happy.

    #150867
    Dora
    Participant

    MPSK, Now even Private Equity is going after the minnow investors. I think Congress passed a change in regulations (or is still considering the change) letting minnows (“nonaccredited investors”, aka investor has less than one $million in net worth) letting the minnows invest in PE. Seems like a warning flag that maybe things aren’t as hunky-dory in the economy as Biden says.

    Here’s the (proposed) rule change pdf, but it’s long and boring. Saying small investors, excuse me, “nonaccredited investors” should be able to invest in Private Equity the same way they can now invest in penny stocks… is that really a good comparison?
    https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1242&context=wmblr

    #150868
    zerosum
    Participant

    Loss of control/power/ does not means peace.

    The west Created a new NARRATIVE …. using Hate, fear, ignorance, lies

    Front-runner Trump and his extremist/semi-fascist/Ultra MAGA 160 million are out for “revenge” and “retribution—and that Trump might well become a “dictator” and “trample” the Constitution.
    ———-
    Listen to the people/bloggers

    Gaza, Yemen & Ukraine Sound Death Knell for U.S.-Led ‘Rules-Based Global Order’


    Gaza, Yemen & Ukraine Sound Death Knell for U.S.-Led ‘Rules-Based Global Order’

    January 19, 2024

    The world has reached a point of no return. The fraud of Western powers is spectacularly exposed and has become untenable.
    The Western imperial facade is imploding from its inherent corruption.
    It is a perilous time but the harsh truth can set the world free of hegemony and the systemic violence of Western elitist power.

    ———-

    The Western elitist that are in power are ignoring the voices of the people who are demonstrating in the street and calling for ….. PEACE, CEASEFIRE
    ————-
    Listen to the people/bloggers
    https://new.thecradle.co/articles/starving-gaza-egypt-and-israels-rafah-weapon
    Starving Gaza: Egypt and Israel’s Rafah weapon

    “..Tel Aviv has instituted a draconian siege on Palestinians in the Strip, cutting off access to water, electricity, and communications – and the essential crossings – for over 100 days now..”
    ELITIST POWER, …..DEATH, SUFFERING, DEPOPULATION,

    The reality is that the U.S. is now in a HOT regional war involving Gaza, Iran, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, Ukraine
    ———–

    #150869

    Perhaps I should have mentioned- IT IS AN ERROR.
    That “calculator”, btw, told me if I invested $10,000 for 30 years at 5% yearly, I would now have $188,239,504,989.84

    #150870
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Brontotheriidae

    The Titanothere used to exist in the southwest part of North America, when it wasn’t mostly desert.

    #150871
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    “If you get rid of the empire, this world could be taken over by tyrants., … imagine that!

    Welcome to the Empire

    Caitlin Johnstone: Welcome to the Empire

    #150872
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1748752249227006361
    Iraq demands that the US leave the country immediately

    #150873
    zerosum
    Participant

    Listen to the people/bloggers
    https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/war-on-yemen-dont-expect-a-cakewalk/
    War on Yemen? Don’t Expect A Cakewalk
    MIKE WHITNEY • JANUARY 19, 2024

    The table is set for a major conflagration in Yemen that will quickly escalate and spread across the entire Middle East. I see no indication that Biden is planning to slow the rush to war or pull back from the brink. This is shaping up to be a real catastrophe.
    ———–

    #150874
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @zerosum – Thank you very much for the zeta function stuff. It gives voice to something I was trying to argue with someone re: physical properties of matter, and localization of said. I had posited that the properties might be different in different regions of the universe, and perhaps in differing regions within a galaxy, or smaller (ever?) units. Maybe someplace carbon only has 3 bonds possible at STP, for instance. This arose because we were discussing Vernor Vinge’s ‘zones of thought’ – the closer to the center of the galaxy, the less possible organized intelligence, and past a threshold, species are able to ‘improve’ and ascend eventually into…what?

    ————————————————————————–

    Luongo is very good today.

    #150875
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/strike-ukraine-french-contractors-africa
    Russian Missile Strike on French Contractor Base in Ukraine Highlights Heated Franco-Russian Cold War
    Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff
    January-19th-2024

    The Russian Armed Forces on the evening of January 16 were reported to have launched a missile strike targeting the headquarters of predominantly French European foreign fighters in Ukraine. Russian sources subsequently reported that the personnel targeted were military contractors, and that the strike caused at least 80 casualties 60 or more of which were killed. Russian state media reported that these personnel were “highly trained specialists who work on specific weapons systems too complex for the average Ukrainian conscripts,” which “put some of the most lethal and long-range weapons in the Ukrainian arsenal out of service until more specialists are found” to replace them. These claims align with a strong consensus among analysts that in order to allow the Ukrainian Armed Forces to absorb very large quantities of complex Western weaponry, much of which takes several years of training to operate, contractors from across the Western world have played a significant role in operating this hardware. A key example has been the American MIM-104 Patriot air defence system, which Ukrainian personnel were considered unable to operate before 2024 at the earliest, but which began to operate in the country in early 2023. This was difficult to explain other than with the presence of foreign personnel.

    #150876
    WES
    Participant

    Despite thousands of NATO personnel dying in the Ukraine, there have been no public announcements of any of their deaths.

    These dead people simply get “cancelled” 1984 style, as if they never ever existed. So no loss.

    This just goes to show how tight the msm/gov control of info really is. Not a very reassuring fact of life.

    #150877
    Dr. D
    Participant

    GoFish

    #150878
    zerosum
    Participant

    @ thomasjkenney
    Glad that you found the science interesting.
    My “science fiction story” is due to imagining how to get from here to spacetime. (smaller and smaller. Approaching zero) (1/1^2,+1/2 ^2,+ 1/3^2,+ 1/4^2, … 1/12 = 1/1+1/4+1/9+1/16 Have fun.
    ….
    (That is where you can see everything and be everywhere. Just like god can. 🙂 )

    But what is the Riemann zeta function? Visualizing analytic continuation

    #150879
    Oroboros
    Participant

    The thousands of NATO non-deaths in Ukronaziland are explained to the families and loved ones as car crashes or equipment failures, easy-peasy.

    And no they probably don’t even say they were on a ‘top secret mission’ for ‘democracy’.

    Car accidents happen everywhere in the world. The Empire of Lies Satanist Cabal simply hijacks one of a myriad of vehicle accidents worldwide and plugs in the name of their snuffed ‘mercenary’ whose death they want to conceal.

    They don’t want anything high profile like a plane accident to draw attention.

    The families probably just get a text or an email to say their loved one is dead. No actual military person coming to the house to give the news like a “real soldier” gets.

    it was after all “just a car accident”, and probably their fault anyway at that!

    Seriously, do you think the Empire of Lies gives a rats ass about these guys?

    They are not ‘Unknown Soldiers”

    Do you think they will get a “hero’s send off” as The Unknown Mercenary?

    .

    #150880
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    There’s a sucker born every minute!

    Is Social Media an Existential Threat to Civilized Society?

    Modus morons without end, amen.

    #150881
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Duh’merica is based on self deceit and absurdity.

    The absurdity is so pervasive it clings to the skin and soul like a cheap polyester suit made of recycled plastic milk jugs.

    .

    #150882
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    If something is a kangaroo, it is a mammal.

    I am a mammal.

    Therefore, I am a kangaroo.

    If you are a women, you are a human.

    You are a human.

    Therefore, you are a women.

    Welcome to America A-Meme-0-Rico, where only the criminally insane have “rights” & certified gangsters are eligible to run on a ballot.

    E.O.T.

    #150883
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Ukronaziland is finally circling the drain plug

    So desperate for replacement bodies to stoke the Russian Meatgrinder that…….
    .
    .

    At Funeral of a Dead Ukro Soldier the Commissars Thugs Gave Out Conscription Notices to Mourners….

    Sick Mofos supported by the Empire of Lies Gangster Nation

    #150884
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Hunter with one of his cokewhores confessing that these guys (pimps) stole his laptop with all his sex tapes n’ ‘shit’ on it, might be incriminating or somethin’…….

    Quick, call the FBI or the Secret Service, maybe they can find it!

    They think like whores because they are whores.

    .

    #150885
    Oroboros
    Participant
    #150886
    John Day
    Participant

    Ruling Class Concerns https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/ruling-class-concerns

    Spartacus snippets in no particular order:
    ​ Centralized AI is a tyrant’s best friend. It can be used to analyze human behavior, to predict the future behavior of certain social groups or ethnicities or economic classes of people, and to devise means to reorder and redirect that behavior toward ends that the wealthy and powerful find useful and conducive to their interests. It can be used to generate an endless stream of propaganda laced with the predefined messages of the Overclass, to replace rooms full of demoralized propagandists with machines that never tire, never sleep, and always, unflinchingly and unfailingly, promote the same Elite narratives without reservation. It can be used to saturate and replace human-generated culture with cheap facsimiles of art and literature that are forced to conform to a particular Elite-mandated set of moral and ontological standards, never allowed to reproduce ideas that are threatening to those in power. It can be used to reengineer human beings into submissive pets, by designing genes and proteins that stitch the very fabric of that submission into our germlines. ​
    ​ The ruling class want you to be afraid of what decentralized and guardrail-free AI can do. They want you to be afraid because they’re afraid of it, themselves, and the reason why they’re afraid of it is because they don’t want the balance of power to shift from them to us.​..
    ..If I could name one thing that pissed me off the most, it would probably be when the FDA and CDC decided that they didn’t want to investigate Kevin McKernan’s claims of DNA contamination in the mRNA vaccines, which they quite obviously have, and which has been independently verified. It took Dr. Ladapo sending them a sternly worded letter to get things back on track, but they’re still stonewalling. Meanwhile, as it turns out, the pseudouridylation of the vaccine mRNA has other consequences, like causing +1 ribosomal frameshifts that translate into protein gobbledygook.
    Because proteins are made from amino acids corresponding to three-letter codon sequences in RNA, the amino acids you get depend on where you start reading the RNA from. That’s a reading frame. If you frameshift one letter ahead during translation by a ribosome, all subsequent three-letter codons read differently. They produce uncharacterized products. Why do you think Pfizer falsified their Western blots? Oh, you didn’t know? You didn’t look at the regulatory submissions and see that the Western blots they submitted were completely faked? …
    ..What about the conference just held by Professor Masanori Fukushima a few days ago, about the endless reports of adverse events with the vaccines, including IgG4 class switches that tell the immune system to simply ignore the Spike protein as though it were an allergen? …
    .. In their infinite wisdom, our supposed betters have decreed that the narrative of vaccine safety and efficacy must be protected against all challenges, even the revelation of obvious and overt flaws in the vaccines’ design that contribute to negative efficacy and adverse health events up to and including death…
    ..The biggest problem we have is that most people are not accustomed to the notion of a criminal government. Any serious analysis of the CIA’s activities over the past several decades would inevitably lead one to the conclusion that our governments are so deeply entwined with organized crime, it’s arguable that they function like legitimized criminal cartels…
    ..As the COVID-19 vaccine campaigns have demonstrated—orchestrated, as they were, in the depths of the military-pharma-intelligence Biodefense Mafia complex and targeted at law-abiding citizens—this is too much to hope for. What can you even say about a system that demands your trust and respect even as it slits your children’s throats right in front of you? …
    ..Why do the Overclass complain about a lack of trust in institutions? Why are they so busy trying to suppress mis-, dis-, and malinformation? Why, that’s simple, really. It’s because they know how exposed they are. They know that even the most basic analysis of their behavior reveals the aforementioned patterns. They don’t want you thinking about this, much less discussing it with others. After all, dissent is dangerous disinformation…
    ..No more. No more of this nonsense. No more of being sold down the damn river…
    ​..Resist, resist, resist. We outnumber the people who are doing this to us, and we outnumber them massively. Decentralize. Boycott the system. Build your own parallel systems. Parallel education, parallel healthcare, parallel finance.
    ..We can stop the monsters who are doing this to us. We must stop them cold, leave them hanging and leave the thieves empty-handed. Our lives depend on it.
    https://iceni.substack.com/p/spartacast-16

    ​ Noor Bin Laden reports globalist elites heavily discussed ‘censoring US conspiracy theorists’ at WEF
    ​ Specifically, she said, it was discussed that speech from “US conspiracy theorists” needed to be censored, “especially with President Trump winning the Iowa caucus” and the 2024 US presidential elections on the horizon.
    ​ “MAGA and President Trump have been living rent-free in the heads of the people here at Davos throughout the week,” she said. “And even though President Trump wasn’t here, he was very much the center of conversation here in Davos.”
    ​ “Are they in fact, scared and fearful of what they see coming out of places like Iowa this week?” Posobiec asked Bin Laden.
    She replied that “it is very much a spiritual battle that we’re in and these people are, there are no other words to say they’re very much evil, and their agenda is absolutely evil.”
    ​ The globalist elites in attendance at WEF referred to themselves as “guardians of trust,” Bin Laden reported, and “think they are the masters of the world” despite being largely self-appointed.
    https://www.humanevents.com/2024/01/19/exclusive-noor-bin-laden-reports-globalist-elites-heavily-discussed-censoring-us-conspiracy-theorists-at-wef

    #150887
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Bill Gates Set Up 20 Shell Companies to Hide Purchase of $113 Million of Nebraska Farmland
    ​ The limited liability companies, buried under layers of business names, overlapping employees and addresses in at least three states, form a network more tangled and opaque than the one created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is buying a giant amount of Nebraska ranch land.
    ​ In 2017, the Canadian board decided to offload a half-billion dollar chunk of its American farmland portfolio — including all 22,830 acres of its Nebraska land.
    ​ The buyer of those unassuming-sounding Nebraska farms wasn’t publicly listed. Until now, the financial details of the transaction and the gargantuan loan he’s taken out against it have remained publicly unknown.
    ​ The buyer’s name: Bill Gates.

    Bill Gates Set Up 20 Shell Companies to Hide Purchase of $113 Million of Nebraska Farmland

    The super-rich got that way through monopolies​ , A report in honor of Davos.​ Cory Doctorow [and things worse than monopolies, too…]
    https://doctorow.medium.com/the-super-rich-got-that-way-through-monopolies-c4fd28ef69d6

    The social housing secret: how Vienna became the world’s most livable city​ Thanks Charles.
    In the Austrian capital, renters pay a third of what their counterparts do in London, Paris or Dublin. How is it possible?
    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city

    ​Kyle Young’s journey through the world of growing non-rectangular houses continues.
    bypassing the communistic housing paradigm , how costa rica dealt with globalist rape and run tactics
    https://secularheretic.substack.com/p/bypassing-the-communistic-housing

    #150888
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Pentagon Declares ‘We Don’t Think We Are at War’ with Houthis as US Bombs Yemen for 7th Time
    President Joe Biden admitted the attacks were not curbing Houthis attacks but said the attacks would continue

    Pentagon Declares ‘We Don’t Think We Are at War’ with Houthis as US Bombs Yemen for 7th Time

    ​ These things are EXPENSIVE. Iraqi Resistance shoots down US MQ-9 drone amid CENTCOM silence​
    The Iraqi Resistance has announced its responsibility for the operation that took place on Thursday night.
    https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/iraqi-resistance-shoots-down-us-mq-9-drone-amid-centcom-sile

    ​ ‘Playground of choice’: Iran mobilises to drive US troops out of Iraq
    The US has the cudgel of the American dollar to prevent its expulsion from Iraq, but will the Biden administration use it?
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/playground-choice-iran-organizes-drive-us-troops-out-iraq

    ​ Al-Sudani Says US-Led Coalition Withdrawal ‘Necessary’ for Iraq’s Security
    US bases in Iraq continue to come under attack
    ​ Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani reaffirmed on Thursday his desire for the US-led international coalition in Iraq to withdraw, saying it’s “necessary” for the country’s security.

    Al-Sudani Says US-Led Coalition Withdrawal ‘Necessary’ for Iraq’s Security

    ​ Palestinian Resistance treats IOF officer; ​ ‘Israel’ kills him later​ [​The “Hannibal Directive” is to kill captured Israelis, to ​eliminate their value in negotiations.]
    ​ Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees in Palestine, announced, on Friday, that an Israeli strike killed Ohad Yahalomi, an Israeli officer taken captive on October 7.
    ​ In a statement, al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades detailed that Israeli officer Ohad Yahalomi taken captive was targeted by the Israeli army along with the group responsible for him, resulting in his moderate injury, which was treated.​ However, Israeli warplanes deliberately targeted Yahalomi again a few days ago with the intention of killing him, and despite their efforts to save his life, he was killed, the Resistance group’s statement added.
    ​ Accusations leveled against Israeli forces killing their own troops are not new.
    https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/palestinian-resistance-treats-iof-officer—israel–kills-hi

    #150889
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Israel president hit with criminal complaint in Switzerland: prosecutors
    ​ The Federal Prosecutor’s Office (BA) confirmed that it had received a criminal complaint against the Israeli president, who was at the World Economic Forum (WEF)’s annual meeting in Davos on Thursday to discuss the Gaza war.
    “The criminal complaints will now be examined in accordance with the usual procedure,” BA said in a statement, adding that it was in contact with the foreign ministry “to examine the question of the immunity of the person concerned.”…
    ..The statement said the plaintiffs were seeking a criminal prosecution in parallel to a case brought before the UN’s International Court of Justice by South Africa, which accuses Israel of genocide in its offensive in Gaza.
    Addressing the issue of immunity, the statement suggested that it could be lifted “in certain circumstances,” including in cases of alleged crimes against humanity, adding that “these conditions are met in this case.”
    https://www.arabnews.com/node/2444486/world

    ​ Israeli Reserve Soldiers Refuse to Fight in Gaza. Disobey Illegal Orders, Abandon the Battlefield
    ​ “Half the soldiers of an Israeli reserve battalion refused to fight in the Gaza Strip and were released from duty by their commander” Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed reported on 17 January.
    ​ Inasmuch as the Netanyahu government is involved in an act of genocide against the People of Palestine, Israeli soldiers have an obligation under Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter to Disobey Unlawful Orders” and “Abandon the Battlefield”.
    ​ What is significant is that the Reserve soldiers who refused to fight were not penalized by their commanding officer.
    This courageous action by Israeli Reserve soldiers sets the stage: Abandon the Battlefield should be extended to ALL Israeli combatants.
    ​ Principle IV of the Nuremberg Charter defines the responsibility of combatants
    “to refuse the orders of Government or a superior … “provided a moral choice [is] possible“.
    ​ What we are proposing is the conduct without delay of a Worldwide grass-roots campaign, encouraging: Israeli, American and NATO Combatants to “Disobey Unlawful Orders” and “Abandon the Battlefield”.

    Israeli Reserve Soldiers Refuse to Fight in Gaza. Disobey Illegal Orders, Abandon the Battlefield

    ​ US against ceasefire, sees no signs of war crimes in Gaza: Kirby
    John Kirby says the White House is gathering additional information regarding Mexico and Chile’s request for an investigation into potential war crimes by “Israel”.
    https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-against-ceasefire–sees-no-signs-of-war-crimes-in-gaza–k

    ​ DOE Investigations of Campus “Antisemitism” Suppress Criticism of Gaza Genocide
    As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, Department of Education investigations are chilling dissent at US campuses.

    DOE Investigations of Campus “Antisemitism” Suppress Criticism of Gaza Genocide

    #150890
    John Day
    Participant

    ​Meryl Nass MD , How many UN agencies are trying to take away freedom of speech simultaneously? We’ve identified 3 so far.(Unesco, UN, WHO)
    They are racing to the finish line before everyone wakes up! They can’t win unless they have total information control.
    https://merylnass.substack.com/p/how-many-un-agencies-are-trying-to

    ​ Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine Caused Autism-Like Behaviors in Offspring of Rats Vaccinated During Pregnancy
    Pfizer’s BNT162b COVID-19 vaccine administered to pregnant rats was associated with significant structural and biochemical changes in the brains of offspring and noticeable deficits in several behavioral domains. These effects may not directly relate to humans.

    Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine Caused Autism-Like Behaviors in Offspring of Rats Vaccinated During Pregnancy

    ​ No More Research on Cellphone Radiation and Human Health, Government Says​ [Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers.]
    The National Toxicology Program said it no longer plans to study the effects of cellphone radiation on human health, citing technical challenges and lack of resources — even though its own $30 million study found evidence of cancer and DNA damage.
    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/national-toxicology-program-stop-research-cellphone-radiation-human-health​/

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