Mar 012024
 
 March 1, 2024  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,


Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German artist, philosopher, composer, mystic Cosmic Tree

 

West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT)
What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses (Helmer)
How Realistic Is Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)
West Destroying Its Own Financial System – Putin (RT)
The CIA in Ukraine – The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour (Patrick Lawrence)
CIA in Ukraine (John Kiriakou)
The Internationalization of the Neo-Liberal Shock (Dionísio)
Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)
Yellen Voices Support For Permanent Inflation (Denninger)
‘State-minus’: Biden’s Palestine Solution (Cradle)
Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)
Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy on Trump Campaign (Chernin)
Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy” (ZH)
Julian Assange and Gaza Civilians (Amar)
Biden Arrives At Border To Address His Voters (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Not sure what Biden does, but I don’t think it’s called ‘walking’. Closest thing is Elon Musk’s new humanoid robot.

 

 

 

 

WH doc

 

 

 

 


“The judge who just threw Trump off the ballot in Illinois typically “presides over minor traffic violations”

 

 

Loan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763341500627480884

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.”

West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT)

Western officials indulging in escalatory rhetoric should realize that they are effectively invoking the specter of an all-out nuclear war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in a speech to legislators in Moscow on Thursday. He also once again accused the West of instigating the Ukraine conflict. Putin addressed the topic in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech, a key event in which the president declares his plans and priorities in a televised address to both houses of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the national legislature. President Putin insisted that recent claims by Western officials that Moscow is planning to attack NATO are “nonsense.” At the same time, those same nations are “selecting targets to conduct strikes on our territory,” the Russian head of state claimed, adding that there is now talk of “deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine.”

Putin reminded would-be aggressors that all previous attempts to conquer Russia have ended in failure, warning that “now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.” He pointed out that Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, which is in a state of “complete readiness for guaranteed deployment.” “Everything that they are thinking up now, that they are scaring the world with, it all really poses the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, and therefore, the destruction of civilization. Don’t they understand this?” The Russian president suggested that Western politicians making those escalatory remarks “have already forgotten what war is.” Unlike Russians, who have faced “difficult trials” in recent decades, Westerners apparently “think that these are just some cartoons,” President Putin opined.

The Russian president’s remarks came after his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, toyed with the idea of a potential ground deployment of Western militaries to Ukraine while talking to reporters on Monday, saying “in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg hastened to emphasize that “there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in turn, declared that there will be “no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries” in the future. The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland also chimed in with similar assurances. Commenting on Macron’s remark, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that such a development would mean that “we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability” of an all-out military confrontation between NATO and Russia.

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“I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’”

What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses (Helmer)

The collapse of the Ukrainian army following the battle of Avdeyevka, and its disorganized retreat, have accelerated Russian military thinking of how far westward the NATO allies will decide that the Ukrainian statelet can be defended against the expected Russian advance – and how fast new NATO defences can be created without the protection of ground-to-air missile batteries like Patriot, long-range artillery like the M777, and mobile armour like the Abrams, Bradley, and Caesar: all of them have already been defeated in the east. In short, there is no longer a NATO-command line of fortification east of the Polish border which deters the Russian General Staff. Also, no bunker for the Zelensky government and its NATO advisors to feel secure. Cutting and pasting from the Russian military bloggers and the Moscow analytical media, as a handful of US podcasters and substackers are doing as often as their subscribers require, is the Comfy-Armchair method for getting at the truth.

Reading the Russian sources directly, with the understanding that they are reporting what their military and intelligence sources are saying off the record, is still armchair generalship, but less comfy, more credible. Offence is now the order of the day up and down the contact line. The daily bulletin from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow calls this “improving the tactical situation” and “taking more advantageous positions”. In the past three days, Monday through Wednesday, the Defense Ministry also reported the daily casualty rate of the Ukrainian forces at 1,175, 1,065, and 695, respectively; three M777 howitzer hits; and the first Abrams tank to be destroyed. Because this source is blocked in several of the NATO states, the Russian military bloggers, which reproduce the bulletins along with videoclips and maps, may be more accessible; also more swiftly than the US-based podcasters and substackers can keep up.

Moscow sources confirm the obvious: the operational objective is to apply more and more pressure at more and more points along the line, in as many sectors or salients (“directions” is the Russian term) as possible simultaneously. At the same time, air attack, plus missiles and drones, are striking all rear Ukrainian and NATO airfield, road, and rail nodes, ammunition storages, vehicle parks, drone manufactories, fuel dumps, and other supply infrastructure, so as make reinforcement and redeployment more difficult and perilous. What cannot be seen are the Russian concentrations of forces aimed in the north, centre and south of the battlefield. Instead, there is what one source calls “an educated guess is that when the main blow comes, it will be North, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, or Centre, Dniepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, or both simultaneously.” For timing, the source adds, “after the Russian election.”

That is now less than three weeks away, on March 17. President Vladimir Putin will then reform his new government within four to six weeks for announcement by early May. Ministerial appointments sensitive to the General Staff’s planning are the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is expected to remain in place; and the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who may retire. Following the call of French President Emmanuel Macron for the “possibility” of French ground force deployment to the Ukraine battlefield, and the subsequent clarification by French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, the Russian assessment has been derisory. “As for Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine,” replied Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova, “I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’

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“The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.”

How Realistic Is Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)

As readers know, I am concerned that Putin’s tolerance of a too-long-continuing-Ukraine-conflict is encouraging the conflict to spin-out-of-control. I have written about this risk neglected by the Kremlin many times. On February 27 I was interviewed by Finian Cunningham about this risk. If the interview is posted online, I will link to it hopefully before it is taken down by the narrative controllers. There is no doubt that I have been proven correct that the provocations, accepted by the Kremlin with only words in opposition, have increased in severity over the past two years. First the West would send to the Ukrainians helmets and sleeping bags. Then small arms ammunition. Then artillery. Tanks were mentioned, but Washington and NATO said, “never tanks.” Then tanks were sent. Then, after first being denied, drones and intermediate-range missiles. Then targeting information. Then mercenaries.

Then after being denied, now long-range missiles and US F-16s capable of penetrating deep into Russia herself far from the battlefront are under consideration. And now the latest, the French President’s proposal to send NATO troops. “We will never send troops,” declares NATO’s Stoltenberg. But all the denials previously were breached and meant nothing. So the question before us is: Has Putin reduced the threat of the conflict spinning out of control by fighting it on a low key basis limited to Donbass and the Russian areas, or has his low-key behavior convinced Washington’s neoconservatives that Putin is a paper tiger who will accept any provocation and any insult. If the latter, the provocations will increase in severity until the conflict spins out of control. Clearly from helmets to NATO troops is an immense escalation. Putin understands that the West intends Russia’s destruction, so why does he prolong conflicts that provide opportunities for the West to expand conflict?

The Kremlin and the Western media whores see the fundamental issue as Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. The neoconservatives who control US foreign policy seem to think that Putin will stand aside from this just as he did from being called by the President of the United States “the new Hitler” and “a son-of-a-bitch.” No American official of any rank ever spoke in public of Soviet leaders in such terms. On his way to Reykjavik, Iceland, for his meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan told his entourage that one word of rudeness to the Soviet officials and you were fired on the spot. Reagan’s goal was to end the Cold War, and he did. It was the neoconservatives and the US military/security complex that restarted it. As the deceased Steven Cohen and I emphasized, the threat of nuclear war today is much higher than during the Cold War.

In those years, leaders on both sides worked to reduce tensions and to achieve mutual security that would reduce the danger of nuclear confrontation. I was part of the effort and perhaps I am one of a small handful of people still alive who know and lived the experience. Once the Soviet Union collapsed when the Politburo placed Russian President Gorbachev under house arrest, the neoconservatives saw their chance at world hegemony and began their assault on Russia. All of the security-enhancing agreements worked out over the years of the Cold War were cancelled by Washington. NATO’ Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is Washington’s puppet. But he is not sufficiently stupid to knowingly start a war with Russia. Who can possibly imagine Europe, which is incapable of protecting its own borders from being over-run by unarmed immigrant-invaders, possibly fighting Russia. The war, if Putin could bring himself to fight it, would be over in a few minutes.

[..] It is Putin’s refusal to impose restraint on a weak and collapsing West that is leading to nuclear Armageddon. I am not writing because I want a Russian victory. I am writing because I do not want nuclear Armageddon. The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.

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“They’re sawing off a branch they’ve been sitting on for decades..”

West Destroying Its Own Financial System – Putin (RT)

The West is discrediting its own currencies and banking system, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on Thursday, adding that the established monopolies and stereotypes in the global economy are crumbling. “The West itself is discrediting its own currencies and banking system. They’re sawing off a branch they’ve been sitting on for decades,” Putin said. Meanwhile, Russia together with so-called ‘friendly’ nations will focus on creating new financial infrastructure that will be free from politics as it seeks to unite efforts in the face of global challenges, he said. The president was referring to the global trend of moving toward using national currencies in trade rather than the US dollar that has gained significant momentum after Russia was cut off from the Western financial system and had its foreign reserves frozen in 2022.

A number of both Russian and foreign officials have repeatedly warned that the US currency has long been used as a weapon, noting that such actions have prompted countries around the world to reduce their dependence on the greenback. Putin emphasized that Moscow is working with its allies on the basis of equality and respect of mutual interests. Because of this, he said, more and more countries are seeking to join groups such as BRICS, the Eurasian Economic Union, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Together with its partners Russia will continue building “safe” transport corridors based on new technology and create a new global financial network “free from political interference” at a time when the world economy, trade and finance are undergoing rapid changes, the president noted.

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“..They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win..”

The CIA in Ukraine – The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour (Patrick Lawrence)

If you have paid attention to what various polls and officials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West have been doing and saying about Ukraine lately, you know the look and sound of desperation. You would be desperate, too, if you were making a case for a war Ukrainians are on the brink of losing and will never, brink or back-from-the-brink, have any chance of winning. Atop this, you want people who know better, including 70 percent of Americans according to a recent poll, to keep investing extravagant sums in this ruinous folly. And here is what seems to me the true source of angst among these desperados: Having painted this war as a cosmic confrontation between the world’s democrats and the world’s authoritarians, the people who started it and want to prolong it have painted themselves into a corner. They cannot lose it. They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win: This is what you see and hear from all those good-money-after-bad people still trying to persuade you that a bad war is a good war and that it is right that more lives and money should be pointlessly lost to it.

Everyone must act for the cause in these dire times. You have Chuck Schumer in Kyiv last week trying to show House Republicans that they should truly, really authorize the Biden regime to spend an additional $61 billion on its proxy war with Russia. “Everyone we saw, from Zelensky on down made this very point clear,” the Democratic senator from New York asserted in an interview with The New York Times. “If Ukraine gets the aid, they will win the war and beat Russia.” Even at this late hour people still have the nerve to say such things. You have European leaders gathering in Paris Monday to reassure one another of their unity behind the Kyiv regime—and where Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending NATO ground troops to the Ukrainian front. “Russia cannot and must not win this war,” the French president declared to his guests at the Elysée Palace. Except that it can and, barring an act of God, it will.

Then you have Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s war-mongering sec-gen, telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last week that it will be fine if Kyiv uses F–16s to attack Russian cities once they are operational this summer. The U.S.–made fighter jets, the munitions, the money—all of it is essential “to ensure Russia doesn’t make further gains.” Stephen Bryen, formerly a deputy undersecretary at the Defense Department, offered an excellent response to this over the weekend in his Weapons and Strategy newsletter: “Fire Jens Stoltenberg before it is too late.” Good thought, but Stoltenberg, Washington’s longtime water-carrier in Brussels, is merely doing his job as assigned: Keep up the illusions as to Kyiv’s potency and along with it the Russophobia, the more primitive the better. You do not get fired for irresponsible rhetoric that risks something that might look a lot like World War III.

What would a propaganda blitz of this breadth and stupidity be without an entry from The New York Times? Given the extent to which The Times has abandoned all professional principle in the service of the power it is supposed to report upon, you just knew it would have to get in on this one. The Times has published very numerous pieces in recent weeks on the necessity of keeping the war going and the urgency of a House vote authorizing that $61 billion Biden’s national security people want to send Ukraine. But never mind all those daily stories. Last Sunday it came out with its big banana. “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin” sprawls—lengthy text, numerous photographs. The latter show the usual wreckage—cars, apartment buildings, farmhouses, a snowy dirt road lined with landmines.

But the story that goes with it is other than usual. Somewhere in Washington, someone appears to have decided it was time to let the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence and programs in Ukraine be known. And someone in Langley, the CIA’s headquarters, seems to have decided this will be O.K., a useful thing to do. When I say the agency’s presence and programs, I mean some: We get a very partial picture of the CIA’s doings in Ukraine, as the lies of omission—not to mention the lies of commission—are numerous in this piece. But what The Times published last weekend, all 5,500 words of it, tells us more than had been previously made public.

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“If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

CIA in Ukraine (John Kiriakou)

The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present. The story, “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” is one of initial bilateral distrust, but a mutual fear and hatred of Russia, that progresses to a relationship so intimate that Ukraine is now one of the CIA’s closest intelligence partners in the world. At the same time, the Times’ publication of the piece, which reporters claimed relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the US, and “several European countries,” raises multiple questions: Why did the CIA not object to the article’s publication, especially with it being in one of the Agency’s preferred outlets? When the CIA approaches a newspaper to complain about the classified information it contains, the piece is almost always killed or severely edited. Newspaper publishers are patriots, after all. Right?

Was the article published because the CIA wanted the news out there? Perhaps more important was the point of the article to influence the Congressional budget deliberations on aid to Ukraine? After all, was the article really just meant to brag about how great the CIA is? Or was it to warn Congressional appropriators, “Look how much we’ve accomplished to confront the Russian bear. You wouldn’t really let it all go to waste, would you?” The Times’ article has all the hallmarks of a deep, inside look at a sensitive—possibly classified—subject. It goes into depth on one of the intelligence community’s Holy of Holies, an intelligence liaison relationship, something that no intelligence officer is ever supposed to discuss. But in the end, it really isn’t so sensitive. It doesn’t tell us anything that every American hasn’t already assumed. Maybe we hadn’t had it spelled out in print before, but we all believed that the CIA was helping Ukraine fight the Russians. We had already seen reporting that the CIA had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine and that the U.S. government was training Ukrainian special forces and Ukrainian pilots, so there’s nothing new there.

The article goes a little further in detail, although, again, without providing anything that might endanger sources and methods. For example, it tells us that: • There is a CIA listening post in the forest along the Russian border, one of 12 “secret” bases the US maintains there. One or more of these posts helped to prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. That’s great. But the revelation exposes no secrets and tells us nothing new. • Ukrainian intelligence officials helped the Americans “go after” the Russian operatives “who meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.” I have a news flash for the New York Times: The Mueller report found that there was no meaningful Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And what does “go after” mean? • Beginning in 2016, the CIA trained an “elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems.” This is exactly what the CIA is supposed to do. Honestly, if the CIA hadn’t been doing this, I would have suggested a class action lawsuit for the American people to get their tax money back. Besides, the CIA has been doing things like this for decades. The CIA was able to obtain important components of Soviet tactical weapons from ostensibly pro-Soviet Romania in the 1970s.

• Ukraine has turned into an intelligence-gathering hub that has intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kiev could initially handle. Again, I would expect nothing less. After all, that’s where the war is. So of course, communications will be intercepted there. As to the CIA station being overwhelmed, the Times never tells us if that is because the station was a one-man operation at the time or whether it had thousands of employees and was still overwhelmed. It’s all about scale. • And lest you think that the CIA and the U.S. government were on the offensive in Ukraine, the article makes clear that, “Mr. Putin and his advisers misread a critical dynamic. The CIA didn’t push its way into Ukraine. U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.” It’s at this point in the article that the Times reveals what I believe to be the buried lead: “Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: “If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

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Dionísio starts off talking about Astrid Klein, not Naomi. Normally such mistakes would make me switch off. But I like the topic of The Shock Doctrine on a wider scale.

The Internationalization of the Neo-Liberal Shock (Dionísio)

Looking at the present day, under the light of the formulation revealed by Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” is an enlightening challenge and absolutely reveals the historical importance of the analysis that is carried out, even if, in my opinion, it suffers from a certain “historical punctuality” considering the moments of application of a process that has come to be known as “neo-liberal economic shock theory”. Klein’s analysis, based on known historical facts, recounts secret CIA experiments in psychology and psychiatry, the application of the techniques in Pinochet’s Chile and many other countries (including post-Soviet Russia), and the neo-liberal doctrine of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys”, tells us of a process whereby the population is put into a permanent state of shock in order to leave it unresponsive (as in lobotomy treatments), so that, under the cover of the generated amorphism, extremely unpopular measures are applied which, above all, are diametrically opposed to the interests of the majority.

The very process of discrediting politics and politicians also serves as a pretext for the same type of action. Take Trump, Bolsonaro, Milei, Meloni, Duda or Zelensky. The kind of demagogic shock (using corruption, mass migration, etc.) gives birth to a pretext that works under the same assumptions. However, and bearing in mind the unquestionable topicality of the approach, analyzing the world today according to this theory reveals a truth that, in my opinion, negates the idea of a certain “historical punctuality” of the neo-liberal economic shock. In my opinion, Naomi Klein’s approach, at that time, showed us a world in which the US was unleashing — and is unleashing — processes of transformation aimed at subverting the national and popular sovereignty, democracy and freedom of the peoples, in order to place their nations at the service of the process of neo-liberal and imperialist accumulation.

The successive clashes are taking place in circumscribed national spaces and in a chronology whose origins go back to Pinochet’s Chile, but which lacks a certain continuity, as if we were dealing with a gang that was jumping from country to country, without ever reaching the whole. Now, while Klein’s approach proposes a certain national circumscription, the historical events of the last 23 years point us towards a globalization or internationalization of the shock doctrine, towards its historical continuity and towards a totalizing dimension, encompassing all dimensions of our lives from the outset and not just on arrival. Given what we know today, I can’t help but think that the chronologically linked examples of the application of the shock doctrine are nothing more than experiments, constantly being perfected, aimed at an epilogue, an epilogue that we are experiencing today. The globalization and internationalization of the neo-liberal shock, along with its phenomenological diversification.

It no longer only affects the economic or social component, but also health, the state, security, defense, information and propaganda. This is the clear materialization of another doctrine, the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance”. With the turn of the 21st century, everything changed! On September 11, 2001, the world was shocked by a terrorist attack of spectacular proportions, which culminated in the collapse of three towers in New York. As if Hollywood had been asked to prepare a terrorist attack. The American — and Western — population was in a state of shock, stunned, and we soon began to see direct attacks on the way of life that so many considered to be eternal — remember Fukuyama — and historically perfected. In the US, we saw the publication of the Patriot Act and the start of the War on Terror. State surveillance became part of American life and, a little later, European life, particularly after renewed waves of terrorist shocks in Spain, England and France.

The proven link between the perpetrators of terrorist acts — Al-Qaeda — and their creators, very few took, or wanted to take, notice of. Today, we go into a supermarket, visit a museum, make a phone call or take a photograph and we have the guarantee that, somewhere in space, that information will be processed, aggregated, integrated, analyzed and stored. Terrorism has become part of our lives and, under that pretext, mass surveillance. Bin Laden became the devil himself, the demon who terrorized the dreams of our little children, who would be protected by the omnipresent Pentagon and other “deep state” agencies. It was this “deep state” that took the opportunity to generalize and normalize torture, concentration camps like Guantánamo and the secret, or not so secret, prisons where all those who oppose the imperial designs are still held today. It was time to internationalize the terror that the Middle East had felt almost since the founding of the Anglo-Saxon spearhead in the region, the Zionist state of Israel and its infamous Mossad.

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The Supreme Court will have to issue an opinion, whether it likes to or not.

Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted review of the presidential immunity question, but set an expedited schedule for the review of the question with oral argument scheduled for April. Former president Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Legal Scholars are extremely thankful for the Supreme Court’s Decision today to take up Presidential Immunity.” As I mentioned last night in the coverage, legal scholars are hardly doing a conga line in celebration. Indeed, this morning had the usual voices attacking the Court as “craven” and partisan for granting review in the case. Despite the Court (including three Trump appointees) repeatedly ruling against Trump and conservative causes in past cases, the same voices declared that the Court was a cabal of politically compromised lickspittles.

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was outraged on the air and denounced “the cravenness of the court.” She noted that the Court took a whole two weeks to consider the question, ignoring the usual schedule of months of such deliberation. She added: “Obviously, pushing all of the cases that they can push to a point where Trump will be standing for election before any of us have heard the verdicts in any of those cases. Got it. It is the timing…This is BS, and you are doing this as a tactic to help for political friend, partisan patron. For you to say that this is something the court needs to decide because it is unclear in the law is fragrant bullpucky and they know it and don’t care that we know it. That is disturbing about the future legitimacy of the court.” Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner dismissed the review as a political effort to do Trump “an enormous favor.” Kirschner also said that it was “clear” the court “sold American democracy down the river” to help Trump.

Mary Trump, the niece of the former president, declared that “the Supreme Court of the United States just reminded us with this corrupt decision that the insurrection did not fail–it never ended.” In other words, the Supreme Court itself is now part of the “insurrection.” It is that easy. Once you start to remove people from the ballot by declaring a riot an insurrection, even courts become insurrectionists by allowing for a review of lower court rulings. For years, liberal law professors and pundits have filled the media with dire predictions that the Supreme Court was about to carry out a long-planned “coup” and “power grab” — one even wrote that the court could be on the brink of establishing “one-party rule” in the United States. These commentators often ignore the countervailing cases where conservative justices voted against conservative causes and immediately return to these sensational claims whenever the Court is seen as a hinderance of their agenda, even in the simple act of granting review of a long-debated constitutional question.

[..] There are a variety of reasons why the Court could have put this on the calendar for further argument. While I still believe that Trump will not be able to secure a majority on his sweeping immunity theory, some justices may be concerned over D.C. Circuit opinion and the lack of clarity on when a president is protected for actions taken in office. It is possible to uphold the lower court in its outcome but change the rationale or analysis. The Court has not been particularly eager to reenter this area of constitutional law, but it may now be prepared to lay down new precedent and bring greater clarity for future presidents.

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“..The inflation of the last few years is directly traceable to the end of this practice, and it was our sanctions that caused it…”

Yellen Voices Support For Permanent Inflation (Denninger)

No, seriously, that’s exactly what she’s now promoting (although I doubt she realizes it): WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday offered her strongest public support yet for the idea of liquidating roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian Central Bank assets and using them for Ukraine’s long-term reconstruction. “It is necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction,” Yellen said in remarks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors are meeting this week.” In other words, steal the funds. Yellen goes on to say she believes there is a strong international law case for stealing the funds. Well perhaps there is and perhaps not; I will not pass judgment on whether one can find justification in international law for such an action.

I can and will, however, pass judgment on the immediate and permanent outcome of such an action, because that is both obvious and inevitable. It will force trade settlement into all bilateral currency forms immediately and permanently. Now this might not sound so bad and were our government not running a ~7% fiscal deficit right now it might not be. But we are running a 7% fiscal deficit, and kneecapping having trade settlement performed in dollars — or Euros — or Pounds — or whatever else by taking this action will permanently and immediately force all fiscal deficits (not just in the US) to reflect back into that nation’s economy in the form of inflation. We have, in the United States, benefited to an enormous degree from this temporary sequestration over the last 20 years. That was unwound to a large degree when the first round of sanctions was laid and now effectively all trade with either side of the Russian / Ukraine conflict is no longer using dollars as a funding currency.

Why does this matter? Because if that trade goes from $1 trillion a year to $2 trillion a year during the period of time when it increases there is $1 trillion in deficit spending that is effectively “impounded” while the goods are in transit. It is the increase in such trade that drives this, not the volume (since once the transaction settles those funds wind up back into the flow of commerce in the US.) But as international commerce has expanded and the dollar and, to a lesser extent the Euro, were used as the currencies while in-transit our nations have enjoyed a sizeable “sink” for deficit spending without having it immediately rebound back into consumer and producer prices. The inflation of the last few years is directly traceable to the end of this practice, and it was our sanctions that caused it. The Covid deficit spending was certainly a factor but much of that was absorbed and would have stayed absorbed as trade rebounded post pandemic but for our sanctions activity when the war in Ukraine broke out.

Now Yellen claims that the “frozen” assets were not just sequestered — she wants to take them. Most of these funds are in the EU, not the US — but the problem with the action is that producers and customers have no way to influence or prevent such an action by their government in the future and thus this is an external risk that can only be controlled by not exposing yourself to it; thus you demand payment in your local currency. Removing this leg of the stool leaves only one way to get inflation under control: Deficit spending must be cut to no more than the increase in productivity in the economy. When the “PIGS” problems showed up in Europe the EU’s response to this was to mandate no more than a 3% fiscal deficit — which reasonably aligns with productivity.

Meeting this today in the United States would require a cut in federal spending of more than $1 trillion dollars this fiscal year alone, and an escalating amount as existing treasury debt is rolled over at higher rates. Within the next two to three years the total cut required would be more than two trillion or approximately the entire Medicare and Medicaid spend this fiscal year. If that’s not done? We will get runaway — exponentially so — inflationary pressure and be forced to do it anyway at even greater levels of economic pain. If you are betting on lower rates at any time in the next decade, given this position of our government, you’re going to be sorely disappointed both in the outcome and in asset prices.

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“..the Biden administration refuses to clarify what it means by a ‘Palestinian state.’”

‘State-minus’: Biden’s Palestine Solution (Cradle)

Is it sadly ironic that the issue of Palestinian statehood – unresolved for over 75 years – has resurfaced only after Israel’s wholesale carpet-bombing of the Gaza Strip, killing over 30,000 civilians, injuring tens of thousands more, and destroying significant swathes of the territory’s infrastructure. University of California (UCLA) historian James Gelvin states the case plainly: “There would have been no serious discussion of a two-state solution without [the events of] 7 October. As a matter of fact, putting the Palestine issue back on the front burner of international and West Asian politics was one of the reasons Hamas launched its operation.” As Gelvin explains it to The Cradle, Hamas has already scored several victories since its Al-Aqsa Flood operation: “The Palestine issue is back on the international agenda, it is negotiating the release of its captives as an equal partner to Israel,” and has demonstrated that it is “more effective in realizing Palestinian goals than its rival, Fatah.”

While the unprecedented, brutal Israeli military response has indeed illustrated the urgency for establishing a Palestinian safe haven, it is impossible to ignore that western state backers of the 1993 Oslo Accords – which laid out the essential framework for the establishment of a Palestinian state – have then so assiduously ignored and neglected that responsibility. Even greater hypocrisy emerges from the fact that these western powers, led by Washington, have now decided to force the discussion of Palestinian statehood in the midst of Gaza’s carnage, with an Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is infamously opposed to it. So, why is this debate possible now? Why was it ignored before 7 October – or even prior to Netanyahu’s return to the prime ministership?

After enormous public and international pressure, US President Joe Biden has, at least rhetorically, reopened the issue of Palestinian statehood. According to the New York Times, the Biden White House’s new doctrine would “involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in return for strong Palestinian guarantees that their institutions could never threaten Israel.” In addition, the US president’s plan also envisages Saudi–Israeli normalization and a tough military stance against Iran and its regional allies. However, many analysts have already raised questions about the viability of a plan that does not reflect current ground realities.

While Netanyahu rejects the very notion of a Palestinian state, the ‘Biden doctrine’ and its offering of some limited-sovereignty version of a demilitarized Palestinian state is nothing less than humiliating for Palestinians. Dr Muhannad Ayyash, Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University, observes that there is no fundamental change of approach by the US on this issue. In short, the Biden administration refuses to clarify what it means by a ‘Palestinian state.’ Its initiative appears mainly to advance a form of a two-state solution that would be palatable to Israel. Ayyash points out that the key issues related to Palestinian statehood are left unanswered, including the issue of sovereignty, Jewish settlements, the status of East Jerusalem, a necessary West Bank/East Jerusalem with the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian right to return, and so forth.

Aid

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“I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said.”

Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)

A federal judge on Feb. 29 temporarily blocked a Texas law that would allow state police to arrest people who are suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. Senate Bill 4, which was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in December 2023, was slated to go into effect on March 5. However, U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause that grants the federal government sole authority over immigration matters. The judge also rejected Texas’s arguments that it was being invaded under the Constitution’s Article IV. In his order, Judge Ezra, a Reagan appointee, said the law would run afoul of federal immigration laws and claimed Texas would then be able to “permanently supersede federal directives,” which would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority.”

According to the judge, that’s a “notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War.” As a result, he argued, the federal government would “suffer grave irreparable harm” because other states would be inspired to pass similar measures. “SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” he wrote. At a Feb. 15 hearing, Judge Ezra expressed skepticism as the state pleaded its case for what is known as Senate Bill 4. He also said he was somewhat sympathetic to the concerns expressed by Mr. Abbott and other state officials about the unprecedented influx of illegal aliens. Judge Ezra then expressed his concern that the United States could become a confederation of states enforcing their own immigration laws. “That is the same thing the Civil War said you can’t do,” he told the attorneys.

A lawyer for the state of Texas argued in court that because of the deluge of illegal immigrants, enabled by drug cartels and smugglers, it’s tantamount to an invasion and that the state has the right to defend itself under the Constitution. However, the judge said that while he was “sympathetic” to the state’s concerns, he was skeptical of the lawyer’s argument. “I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said. “I don’t see evidence that Texas is at war.” Hours later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed that he filed an appeal against the judge’s ruling, describing it as an “incorrect decision.” “Texas has a clear right to defend itself from the drug smugglers, human traffickers, cartels, and legions of illegal aliens crossing into our State as a consequence of the Biden Administration’s deliberate policy choices,” he said.

“I will do everything possible to defend Texas’s right to defend herself against the catastrophic illegal invasion encouraged by the federal government.” Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has backed the law, saying that it would complement his efforts to provide better border security, noting that his state has dealt with a surge of illegal crossings in recent years. Other measures that Mr. Abbott has implemented are a barrier in the Rio Grande, razor wire barriers at certain border crossings, and prohibiting federal agents who have been tasked by the Biden administration with undoing the measures from accessing border areas in Texas. Other state Republicans who back the law have said it wouldn’t target immigrants already living in the United States because of a two-year statute of limitations on the illegal entry charge and would be enforced only along the state’s border with Mexico.

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“We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.”

Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy on Trump Campaign (Chernin)

The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate. The alleged operation against Trump and his associates, which predates the official start of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, is a stark example of political weaponization of intelligence.

The involvement of foreign allies in surveilling American citizens under the pretext of national security raises serious questions about the integrity of our democratic processes and the autonomy of our nation’s intelligence operations. The narrative that has been pushed for years, that the investigation into Trump’s campaign began with an Australian tip about a boastful Trump aide, now appears to be a cover for a more extensive and coordinated effort to undermine Trump. If reports are accurate, British intelligence began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies as early as 2015, long before the official narrative claims.

The implications of this are profound. It suggests an unprecedented level of collusion between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts to influence the outcome of an American presidential election. The use of foreign intelligence to circumvent American laws and surveillance limitations represents a grave threat to our nation’s sovereignty and the principles of democracy. The fact that this operation was reportedly initiated at the behest of high-ranking officials within the Obama administration, including CIA Director John Brennan, only adds to the severity of the situation. Brennan’s alleged identification of Trump associates for surveillance by the Five Eyes alliance, and the directive to “bump” or make contact with them, illustrates a deliberate strategy to entangle the Trump campaign in a web of suspicion and intrigue.

Moreover, the reported involvement of foreign intelligence in crafting the Russia collusion narrative not only delegitimizes the subsequent investigation but also highlights the willingness of certain elements within the U.S. government to exploit international partnerships for domestic political gain. This revelation demands a thorough and transparent examination to ensure that such abuses of power are brought to light and severely punished to discourage them from being repeated. As more details emerge, it is imperative that the American public demand accountability from those who orchestrated and executed this operation. The sanctity of our electoral process and the trust in our intelligence agencies are at stake. We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.

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“Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed..”

Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy” (ZH)

Hunter Biden on Wednesday testified to Congress that his father, Joe, was indeed “the big guy” referenced in an email pertaining to a business deal with a Chinese state-linked energy company that made the Biden family and friends millions of dollars. He denied, however, that Joe Biden ever received a 10% stake as was indicated in the text message. “At one point, we asked Hunter about the 10% for the ‘big guy,’” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News following the first son’s six-hour, closed-door deposition. “We showed him the email … And he said, ‘Oh, that was after my father left office.’” she told the outlet. Hunter then tried to downplay the 10% idea: “What’s wrong with having a pie-in-the-sky idea? When he [Joe Biden] left office in 2017, it thought he was done. I had no idea was gonna run for president. What’s wrong with just some pie?’ … thinking that he [Joe Biden] could be in the business.” -Breitbart

Greene said that Hunter insisted that “there was no percentage for my father in the business,” and that the 20 speakerphone calls Joe Biden joined was considered normal. “He was saying it’s totally normal for your parents to call you,” said Greene. “He just totally kept on saying, ‘Oh, this is normal. This is normal.'” “Greene also confirmed Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-KY) statement that Hunter testified he joined the board of Burisma Holdings to counter Russian aggression. “He said he was picked to serve on Burisma ‘s board to defend democracy and Burisma was stopping Russian aggression,” Greene said. Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed. In 2015, Burisma was under suspicion of money laundering and public corruption. Prosecutor Victor Shokin investigated the case before his termination due to pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma. Joe Biden later bragged about the firing during a 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.” -Breitbart

According to Greene, Republicans need to “get ready” for Democrats to fabricate another Russian disinformation hoax related to Hunter and the 2024 election – and that it would likely fit the media’s existing narrative against both Trump and protecting the Biden family. “I have a prediction that they’re gonna move it on to members of Congress like me and others, Jim Jordan, Jamie Comer, any of us that got hot and heavy on this Ukraine Burisma stuff, that they’re somehow going to say that Republicans are Russian sympathizers. They’re gonna call me that anyway, because I won’t fund the Ukraine war. They’re probably going to accuse us of being Russian sympathizers and falling for Russian disinformation and its election meddling. And then Democratic members of Congress here already saying they will not certify Trump’s election if he wins.” -MTG “It was there’s a really weird theme in there with the whole Russian thing,” said Greene.

In November, the House Oversight Committee revealed that President Biden received $40,000 in Chinese funds which were “laundered” through his brother, James Biden, in a “complicated financial transaction” marked as a ‘loan,’ which took place just weeks after Hunter Biden threatened the Chinese with his father’s wrath in a July 30, 2017 text message to a CEFC China Energy employee. “The alleged 2017 transfer from first brother James Biden to the future president involves the same business deal in which Joe Biden was called the “big guy” and penciled in for a 10% cut — and would be the first proven instance of the commander-in-chief getting a piece of his family’s foreign income…. The money ended up in Joe Biden’s bank account on Sept. 3, 2017, via a check labeled “loan repayment” from his younger brother, who partnered with Hunter in the venture”. -NY Post

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“..a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy.”

Julian Assange and Gaza Civilians (Amar)

Recently, two of the defining injustices of the contemporary West have been the object of legal proceedings. And while one involves mass murder and the other the torture but not murder of a single victim (at least not yet), there are good reasons to juxtapose the two systematically. The suffering involved is different, but the forces that cause it are intricately linked and, as we will see, reveal much about the nature of the West as a political order. In The Hague, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) – also known as the World Court – has held extensive hearings (involving 52 states and three international organizations) on Israel’s post-1967 occupation – or de facto annexation – of Palestinian territories. These hearings are connected to, but are not the same as, the genocide case against Israel also currently proceeding at the ICJ.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of Israel’s relentless genocide of the Palestinians by bombing, shooting (reportedly including small children, in the head), blockade, and starvation. As of now, the constantly growing – and conservative – victim count stands at about 30,000 killed, 70,000 injured, 7,000 missing, and at least 2 million displaced, often more than once, always under horrific conditions. In London, the Royal Courts of Justice have been the stage for Julian Assange’s fight for an appeal against Washington’s demand to extradite him to the US. Assange, an activist and publisher of investigative journalism, has already been in confinement – of one kind or the other – for more than a decade. Since 2019, he has been held in the Belmarsh high security prison. In fact, what has already happened to him is the modern equivalent of being locked away in the Bastille by royal “lettre de cachet” in absolutist, pre-revolutionary, Ancien régime France.

Multiple observers, including a UN special rapporteur, have argued compellingly that Assange’s treatment has amounted to torture. The essence of his political persecution – in reality, there is no good-faith legal case – is simple: Through his WikiLeaks platform, Assange published leaked materials that exposed the brutality, criminality, and lies of the US’ and UK’s (and, more generally, the West’s) post-9/11 wars. While leaking state secrets is not legal – although it can be morally obligatory and even heroic, as in the case of Chelsea Manning, who was a major WikiLeaks source – publishing the results of such leaks is legal. Indeed, that principle is an acknowledged pillar of media freedom and independence. Without it, media cannot fulfil any kind of watchdog function. Yet Washington is obstinately and absurdly trying to treat Assange as a spy. If it succeeds, “global media freedom” (for what it’s worth…) is toast. This is what makes Assange objectively the single most important political prisoner in the world.

If extradited to the US, whose highest officials have at times plotted his assassination, the WikiLeaks founder will definitely not get a fair trial and will die in prison. In that case, his fate will irreversibly turn into what Washington and London have been working on for over a decade, namely making an example of him by delivering the most devastating blow imaginable against free speech and a truly open society. That Gaza and Assange have something in common has occurred to more than one observer. Both stand for a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy. There also is the grotesquely arrogant American sense of global entitlement: The Palestinians’ rights or, indeed, humanity count for nothing if Israel, Washington’s closest and most lawless ally, wants their land and their lives. Assange, of course, is an Australian citizen.

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“He is going to destroy this country unless he’s stopped by people buying my new Trump sneakers. Look at these beautiful gold sneakers..”

Biden Arrives At Border To Address His Voters (BBee)

Amid record-breaking illegal immigration at the southern border, President Biden arrived in Brownsville Texas to address his voters, who had crossed into the United States the previous night. “Welcome, voters, make yourselves at home!” said Biden to a group of military-aged male Chinese nationals and a crowd of convicted felons from a maximum security Venezuelan prison. “My nurse Jill always says you people are unique breakfast tacos and I couldn’t have said it better. We’re excited for you to live here. You have plenty of great states to choose from, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, or any other crucial battleground states. I was… I… I…” “… well, anyway.” The confused migrant crowd was then directed to a welcome station to receive their smartphones, visa gift cards, and mail-in ballots.

Trump, who also visited the border today, was quick to condemn Biden’s speech and his handling of the border. “Biden is possibly the worst president of any country in the history of the world, or maybe even the entire universe, and maybe all the other universes as well, possibly,” said Trump to reporters. “He is going to destroy this country unless he’s stopped by people buying my new Trump sneakers. Look at these beautiful gold sneakers. They’re the greatest sneakers ever made. So, so beautiful.” Following the Biden border visit, the White House confirmed that there is no crisis at the border. “Everything is fine and there are no illegal immigrants,” said gay black Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre. “There is no crisis and Biden is doing a great job and he’s very smart and sharp and mentally with it and you are a racist.” At publishing time, illegal immigrant support for Biden increased another 33 points.

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Cat reaction

 

 

 

 

Porcupine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763289492897628313

 

 

Salmon

 

 

Illusions

 

 

Coke ad

 

 

Set the table

 

 

Nemo

 

 

Elephant

 

 

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle March 1 2024

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  • #153792

    Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German artist, philosopher, composer, mystic Cosmic Tree   • West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT) • What
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 1 2024]

    #153812

    #153816
    John Day
    Participant

    Last night DBS asked a better question than “What is a woman?”:

    And what is a slave? A slave is someone who does something that they don’t want to do because they are afraid of being intolerably punished in some way if they don’t do as ordered. Those punishments can take a myriad of shapes, but all basically boil down to some form of FEAR of consequences that they think themselves incapable of handling.

    In other words, a slave is someone who believes whatever they’re told and does whatever they’re ordered to, regardless. They COMPLY even when the orders are bad (either for the receiver or some other poor sucker), and they do NOT question the validity of the information they are given, at least not for very long they don’t, because if they disagree with a falsehood or blow the whistle on bad deeds they are punished. The judgment of “guilt” and the dispensation of punishment is, in tragic irony, carried out by other slaves who qualify for their positions by agreeing with the falsehood and showing willingness to dispense the punishment. They do believe whatever they’re told and comply with the orders they are given to execute.

    Nice tight system, as long as no one throws a monkey wrench into the works by stating (revealing?) truths, rejecting a lies, or refusing to do EVIL DESTRUCTIVE THINGS just because some psychopath told them to, and in fear of punishment if they don’t.

    #153817
    John Day
    Participant

    🙂
    Amid record-breaking illegal immigration at the southern border, President Biden arrived in Brownsville Texas to address his voters, who had crossed into the United States the previous night. “Welcome, voters, make yourselves at home!” said Biden to a group of military-aged male Chinese nationals and a crowd of convicted felons from a maximum security Venezuelan prison. “My nurse Jill always says you people are unique breakfast tacos and I couldn’t have said it better.”

    #153818
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Hugh Smith article with a good point: Why are people so reluctant around AIs? Because they know if the AI goes wrong, the corporation won’t care. If it never solves your problem, they won’t care. If it burns down your house or kills you in the hospital the company won’t care. They’ll say: “AI, Oops!” Not my fault! Isn’t AI cool though? But the PEOPLE will care. The CUSTOMERS will care. We already know if you hit India on the phone you’re screwed, nothing is going to get done. It’s only techs and reps going OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM that gets anything done at all. So why would we want a product that will be demonstrably s—ttier than the already unbearable s—tty system we already have?

    It’s a bubble! FOMO! Buy Buy Buy! I’m sure an AI-run AI electric grid would never collapse AI!

    “How a tip off from a Nazi saved my parents.” –BBC For example, they have choices. Free Will. That PARTICULAR Nazi was throwing sand in the gears, as I’m sure most of us do each day. Find a job to be a White Hat? Man, I’m sure there are 10,000 Federal employees going “I came here to make a positive change; but this place is nuts! What am I doing here? Am I even a White Hat? I feel like a Black Hat.” I don’t have an answer but my cynical thought is if you’re within 1,000 miles of D.C. you’re probably helping. Even running a food truck. Logically that can’t be right tho.

    “Sen. Cotton Asks Pentagon Why Airman Who Self-Immolated Was Allowed To Serve: Aaron Bushnell’s actions showed he “obviously harbored extreme, anti-American views.”

    Speechless. Of the two, which do Americans feel was more AntiAmerican? Bombing 25,000 civilian women and children (Austin, yesterday) or refusing to kill women and children while you demand it, Mr. Cotton?

    Biden tapes: Who did this video? He can’t say, he’d be arrested. Like that fork lift driver, that gal re-posting other people’s own words on the internet, a guy photoshopping memes. …You know, seriously dangerous criminals.

    Oh by the way St. Louis is more dangerous than Johannesburg. But: Priorities. Somebody, somewhere, is having a good time. They must be stopped.

    Judge Tracie Porter: like others, she put a stay on her own order, because “Convictions.”

    “Putin: They have already forgotten what war is. They think that all this is a cartoon for them.”

    Yes, that’s the root of the whole thing: abstraction. Here’s the problem: as you see with Fani, etc, EVEN NUKING THEM WOULDN’T WAKE THEM UP. You think a crack ho, sleeping in a squat on a filthy carpet next to some needles is like “Hey, I’m perfectly aware of my surroundings and situation and I approve this message”? No. Once you get lost in your mind, even dying won’t wake you up. Beatings won’t wake you up. Starving won’t wake you up. Mockery won’t wake you up (clearly). Now love can wake you up, but how to get through? Or find any?

    So not only would threatening to nuke every leader in the Northern Hemisphere be met with laughter and derision, even AFTER you nuked them you would be met with confused anger and counterattacks. …Because that’s what psychotic, mentally-ill people ARE. Can you send a SatanII MIRV multi-warheaded missile with therapists on it? Or maybe carpet America with straightjackets instead of leaflets?

    I admit the situation is very grave.

    “I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’”

    Yes but to be fair, we didn’t believe you when you said that. Because “Western Adult” “Opened mouth” so we all just assumed “lie fell out.”

    “In short, there is no NATO-command line of fortification east of the Polish border which deters the Russian General Staff.”

    Read this elsewhere yesterday. Actually might be the Duran quoting this very article. However, it’s probably true, and by their actions, MORE true than I anticipated. Well you can see why they were throwing good men after bad in Avdiivka, because that’s it. The End. Avdiivka or nothing.

    Why didn’t they do more? Because: Reality. Time, men, resources, concrete, gasoline. You know, the kind of things leaders don’t think exist. Only “will” exists. Does Congress have the “Will” to help Ukraine. Magical, self-help, positive thinking. We have the “Will” $150B of it. We have no shells, railroads, steel mills…

    What was more important at the Duran with Luongo yesterday, although he mostly rehashed the usual state-of-game play, was something like this: It APPEARS that Europe knows Russia isn’t coming. That’s a laugh. But since they’ve lost everywhere, on everything else, even Covid, they feel traction, particularly in Germany and need those war bonds to complete their project. They may care a little for other matters, but that’s their priority. So he says “Ultimately, Europe wants to destroy AMERICA more than Russia.” This is true. Europe is buying Russian gas and oil, willy-nilly, with free abandon. Making no weapons, mobilizing nobody. Clearly Russia is no threat whatsoever to them, they accurately deduce.

    On the Anglo side, it’s different. The NeoCons have been injected everywhere, to every key position for 30 years, after being kicked out of Reagan’s White House as “The Crazies in the Basement”. Cuckoo, cuckoo. So they ACTUALLY think Russia is…the Soviet Union, actually. And…something something…mumblemumble…will happen if Russia…mumblemumbles…??? Handwave handwave, exit press conference. Now WHO injected them? They don’t represent America AT ALL, and also not most of the government. They are placed in just a few nexus, gateway positions, far outsized, outnumbered in their power. And what happens in their case?

    Well, 1) The U.S. fights a war they never had to, 2) For free to be Europe’s army while they take month long beach vacations and enjoy free healthcare 3) Bankrupting us and 4) Leaving Europe standing 5) While the U.S. collapses economically, socially, immigrationwise, into Civil War. It is the same people running the P.R. Ops and the NGO immigration campaigns? Yes.

    So, repeat, ““Ultimately, Europe wants to destroy AMERICA more than Russia.” That is, EUROPE has long since declared WAR on America, undermining us far more than even China, and that’s saying something, and is right now trying to find the master stroke, the Coup de Gras, that will finsh America an the American Project, the Age of Enlightenment FOREVER. MissTrust just said “Ya knows whut? Da Banks run everything.” Ya think? The European BANKS have attacked and declared war on the American BANKS. Wall St. The Fed.

    Why? The non NeoFeudal ways, systems and beliefs America holds are intolerable. KNOW YOUR BETTERS. DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD. Even if they knock all that off, it’s IN the people here. They need a CATACLYSMIC collapse to put that genie back in the bottle, collapse, re-nativize, re-aborigine, and re-colonize us for a handful of beads. The way to do that, maybe the ONLY way, is to get us involved in a world war, a nuclear exchange with Russia (wasn’t their first choice) and LOSE.

    The PURPOSE of the NeoCons, is to LOSE. The purpose of Hillary Clinton, is to LOSE. The purpose of the War, is to LOSE. To lose to erase the Constitution and get the gunz. And the Bibles, as we’ve seen in spades for 20 years now. They were caught literally tracking who buys Bibles, which is a stroke even I am amazed at.

    I mean, everyone in America already HAS a Bible, somewhere, and clearly it doesn’t do them any good. It’s like tracking every copy of “The Bourne Identity” and thinking they must all be super-spies. BTW, what they admitted is illegal under every Federal Law and Human Right violation of the 4th Amendment. No one went to jail. The point of injecting NeoCons is to lose. We just made them lose TOO EARLY.

    ““The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.”

    That is true. You all better hope I’m right, that Putin already knows he can’t reason with the West, and America is being puppeted by the White Hats to some extent to Pimp Slap Americans into waking. The first is true. The second is only arguable. If the second exists, it’s extremely likely from the behavior that Biden doesn’t own the football, never has, and at any extreme or point of their choosing – that is, when Americans DEMAND it – the Military will step in, completing their “Russian Revolution Bolshevik 2.0” Plan but not the way the Black Hats arranged it. America will go 1917 and exit “The War”, leaving Russia and Europe alone, and we know what will happen next.

    That leaves the White Bolsheviks and the Red Bolsheviks on the field here, but we already exposed, identified, and sapped all support for the Red Bolsheviks, even the college students, who are the dumbest cadre on planet earth. What we didn’t realize, but they did, because they wrote those textbooks, was that the psychological engineering of the abused Millennials is TIME based. There is only ONE window along their psychological journey where you can enter.

    Imagine as was supposed to happen, we have the war, the American withdrawal and the Red-White Civil War from 2018-2020. All that blind, idiot, chimpanzee fury of the “Summer of Love” was focused on US, instead of…nothing, I guess? And now what? Oh wait: that blind, idiot, chimpanzee fury is SPENT. It can’t be re-animated like a corpse, It was IN the Millennials, and now it’s OUT of them. Built-in. Injected in. Engineered in. Raped in. Abused in. Belittled in. Year after year after year while no one, no adults stopped it, but instead helped them and watched. In a furious, confusing betrayal of authority. LET IT BURN. Now it’s out.

    Millennials have moved on, like other abused children of narcissistic Munchausen parents. They are now trying to buy houses, as pissed off at the State, their Daddy, as everyone else now, instead of PROTECTING and worshiping Daddy State alone.

    So if you have a War now, then what? Russia v Ukraine. Attrition. One side is spent, disinterested. The other side is fresh, innumerous. Since Millennial Left only worship and obey POWER (as universally raped and abused) they will only obey POWER. So if the military has the POWER, they will just shrug and say “What’s new.” That’s it. The End.

    Then we can do the very hard work of re-building and re-setting the nation back to the principles, disarming several million land mines they’ve set up everywhere, city DAs, and ignoring the excruciating and punishing extraction we’ve been living under. Like everyone else, like Germany 1950, we’ll become prosperous so fast without that parasite it’ll make your head spin. It’ll look like a miracle.

    But we have to get there first, and we have to join with Russia – as we probably already have – and beat them.

    That’s it. That’s why they had to have the lockdowns and run an op that expressed this energy. And all it took was one step to derail their plans. One man, one election, one time.

    Pretty risky. Americans like it that way.

    “recounts secret CIA experiments in psychology and psychiatry, the application of the techniques in Pinochet’s Chile and many other countries”

    Huh. Golly, that’s what – I – said!

    “the historical events of the last 23 years point us towards a globalization or internationalization of the shock doctrine”

    So this group is extra-national? A cadre unified but ABOVE nations, like a Interest group or the coordination of intel agencies? Huh. That sounds familiar. Since you see it from Obama ordering the 5 eyes all the way to IRAN. You see it in the WEF merged with MI6 merged with the WHO, merged with the CIA, merged with the IMF. …Openly. In their White Papers you can read at an 8th Grade level for free. BTW merged with Apple, HSBC, BlackRock, Vanguard, and Pfizer too.

    In fact, since it clearly includes Al-q, ISIS, London Banks, Tel-Aviv, San Jose and Italy, it’s LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO BE ANYTHING ELSE. But it’s really hard to get people who haven’t read it all to believe that. …You need to draw them out in public, ranting and raving and misbehaving…and EXPOSE them. How?

    “so why does [Putin] prolong conflicts that provide opportunities for the West to expand conflict?”

    Um, Paul? RUSSIA HAS BEAT EVERY OTHER ENEMY, EVER. They know what they’re doing. So why? A: Attrition. Russia won Napoleon? Attrition. Russia won Wehrmacht? Withstanding then Attrition. Soooo….Macron just did a head count: “Hey boys, who wants to go fight Russia!?!???” Answer: NO ONE. Why? Attrition. They just SAW what happens to ANYONE who gets in the way. Russia will kill every last one of you. But not “nicely”, no. In a very, very, very bad and ugly, brutal way. Then have tea, listen to Tchaikovsky, stretch, rise up happy and refreshed, and go kill you all again. So…Romania, you signing up? You and all your 10,000 whole men? 10 days at the front, entire nation ceases to exist? No? How about you, Portugal, you feel the need to defend a border 1,000 miles away with your 50,000 whole troops, sinking your whole budget for a generation? No? Not popular, can get that through at home?

    Like the psychotic knuckleheads here, everyone in Europe was ALL IN for the war in 2022. You could have got them to kill every man, woman and child, destroy every home nation in service to NATO and the Banks. But like WWI, that was BEFORE THEY SAW WHAT THAT MEANT. So? Let them see what that meant.

    So why did Putin NOT shock and awe, as I say every day? They would have used the WHOLE Russian army. NATO was going to pop up out of the salt mines in their rear. Europe would have mobilized. America might have joined. The expense would have sunk them at home if combined with sanctions. They’d have fought a MILLION Ukrainians all at once instead of 1,000 a day for 2 years.

    I dunno, Paul: Because Reasons? You’re not wrong that this choice has these problems, but do you want to trade? Nah, they know what they’re doing.

    “the people who started it and want to prolong it have painted themselves into a corner. They cannot lose it. They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win:

    That is, “Not Us.” “The people” in the sentence above specifically excludes “The American People” but refers to a few “Crazies in the Basement” in Congress, plus Nikki Hillary. Everyone else is against. “They”, that 0.0001% “cannot afford to lose it.” Out here we could care less. If Ukraine was airlifted to space, like in “Ultron”, we wouldn’t even notice. If ALL EUROPE sank into the seven seas, we also wouldn’t notice or care. So you mean “Them”. Like 20 weirdos locked in the control booth, drooling. Some frame from “Dr. Strangelove”. A spectacle.

    So? Go ahead and lose already, I don’t care. And we’re CERTAINLY not going to help you from losing.

    ““If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back”

    We need more than that. But luckily, it MUST happen. Not only do we not have the money, and as stated the monetary system will collapse (transform), but Ukraine is one of the last major trafficking and laundering centers. Taking it out means it’s not POSSIBLE to inject fake Congressmen, bribe, extort, payoff, and self-fund secret wars by running a shadow government lacking any host nation at all. They might be brought under the size of the United States, where we have a good chance of getting them back in the bottle again, like we could Uruguay, or the Zetas if we wanted to.

    Since that’s already past-tense, Russia already won, that is already baked.

    And the Financial System – entirely run like FTX, and based on the US$ Petrodollar? Yes. Why do you think Bitcoin doubled to $65k in that same time window? If the US$ dies – or transforms, like 1971-80 – what’s the alternative currency? Where do you go? The entirely ringfenced, insider-Yuan? No. Gold remains inside the Bank/CME/LME control mechanism for now. But being new, BTC has an underdeveloped manipulation control mechanism right now, although with Comex listing and ETFs (neither settle in real coin), they’re building it as fast as they can.

    Not fast enough.

    So when not only the CIA has no self-funding of heroin, no more human trafficking at $10k/pop, no money laundering, no arms running, AND no Congressional $1Trillion then what? I wouldn’t normally say this, but I think they’re out of moves. Like in “Risk”, there are no more new countries on the game board. The board is full. You go to space? Aliens? Well, yes, they did, but is that helping? Not really. It actually looks like it’s hurting, opening new conspiracies and new questions. New anger, new distrust, and new accountability.

    You’re F—–D. Good. About 30 years too late in my opinion.

    “• Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)

    This was astonishing. EVEN LOOKING was treason. Okey-dokey then! So apparently like Ukraine, they’re way, way closer to losing than it looks. Also their meta-reality was “Because we all know that Trump caused the most serious attack on the planet where no men were armed and no policemen died, he obviously is hung without process or trial.” What? That’s a tough pill even for the idiots here to swallow. As above, go OUT in public, rant, rave, melt down, collapse in a hebephrenic state on the floor, kicking your feet, see what it gets you. Everyone will think your awesome, smart, measured, controlled, and in charge. NOT! They’ll thing TRUMP is in charge BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT YOU TOLD THEM. That’s why CNN’s ratings are below Saturday cartoons and they have no remaining influence and shouldn’t bother existing.

    The point of owning newspapers is to LIE. There is no other reason. They lose money, but you sell INFLUENCE, bribery and extortion, as Pharma and Prince Andrew pay you to NOT report on reality. TRUE. But you have to lie TO someone. If your reach is 10 people, they won’t pay you, or I would do it.

    “..a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy.”

    Drag them out in the light and let people look at them, drooling and throwing tantrums on WalMart floor. “I want to KILL all the Oompa Loompas Noooooooowwwwww.!!!!”

    “I went up there, I said, “Shrink, I want to kill. I want to kill! I want to see
    Blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth! Eat dead, burnt bodies! I
    Mean Kill. Kill!”

    And I started jumpin’ up and down, yellin’ “KILL! Kill!” and he started
    Jumpin’ up and down with me, and we was both jumpin’ up and down, yellin’
    “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!

    “Meeting this today in the United States would require a cut in federal spending of more than $1 trillion dollars this fiscal year alone, and an escalating amount as existing treasury debt is rolled over”

    This is going to happen, one way or another. A fine description of what will happen with or without Yellen.

    “Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)

    A judge is not going to jump out in traffic and rule on Constitutional matters. They can appeal. Texas can, and I think has, make a law that’s like “No no no: nothing about them being a CITIZEN, it’s about not wearing your required 10-gallon hat rule we just passed.” Then jail 100,000 people badly and let them figure it out. I think it was the lack of papers. This case is doing it the proper and correct way, which you should.

    CocaCola ad: this is a representation of modern physics. All things are a magical, invisible process that hypothesizes a trillion new universes come into being with every coin drop.

    “Modern physics has figured everything out. Except for the small stuff, big stuff, hot stuff, cold stuff, fast stuff, heavy stuff, dark stuff, turbulence, and the concept of time” And consciousness. ― Zach Weinersmith, Science: Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness

    #153819
    John Day
    Participant

    Rachel Maddow and Janet Yellen ae doing what they can to (eventually) Make America Great Again…

    sigh…

    It has to be done.

    #153839
    Figmund Sreud
    Participant

    You need to look up The Moning Newsletter – The New York Times this a.m. It starts with:

    Good morning. We’re covering the Republican fascination with Vladimir Putin — as well as the U.S.-Mexico border, Gaza and the subway.

    … follows with a large, large pix of Putin, … than goes with this – I copy and paste since link function does not want to cooperate:

    Enemy or ally?
    Large parts of the Republican Party now treat Vladimir Putin as if he were an ideological ally. Putin, by contrast, continues to treat the U.S. as an enemy.

    This combination is clearly unusual and sometimes confusing. It does not appear to stem from any compromising information that Putin has about Donald Trump, despite years of such claims from Democrats. Instead, Trump and many other Republicans seem to feel ideological sympathies with Putin’s version of right-wing authoritarian nationalism. They see the world dividing between a liberal left and an illiberal right, with both themselves and Putin — along with Viktor Orban of Hungary and some other world leaders — in the second category.

    Whatever the explanation, the situation threatens decades of bipartisan consensus about U.S. national security.

    Already, House Republicans have blocked further aid to Ukraine — a democracy and U.S. ally that Putin invaded. Without the aid, military experts say Russia will probably be able to take over more of Ukraine than it now holds.

    If Trump wins a second term, he may go further. He has suggested that he might abandon the U.S. commitment to NATO, an alliance that exists to contain Russia and that Putin loathes. He recently invited Russia to “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO countries that don’t spend enough on their own defense. (Near the end of his first term, he tried to pull American troops out of Germany, but President Biden rescinded the decision.)

    Trump has also avoided criticizing Putin for the mysterious death this month of his most prominent domestic critic, Aleksei Navalny, and has repeatedly praised Putin as a strong and smart leader. In a town hall last year, Trump refused to say whether he wanted Ukraine or Russia to win the war.

    There are some caveats worth mentioning. Some skepticism about how much money the U.S. should send to Ukraine stems from practical questions about the war’s endgame. It’s also true that some prominent Republicans, especially in the Senate, are horrified by their party’s pro-Russian drift and are lobbying the House to pass Ukraine aid. “If your position is being cheered by Vladimir Putin, it’s time to reconsider your position,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said last month.

    But the Republican fascination with Putin and Russia is real. The Putin-friendly faction of the party is ascendant, while some of his biggest critics, like Mitch McConnell, who announced this week that he would step down this year as the Republican Senate leader, will soon retire.

    (We recommend this article — in which Carl Hulse, The Times’s chief Washington correspondent, explains that while McConnell sees the U.S. as the world’s essential force, a growing number of Republicans do not.)

    In the rest of today’s newsletter, we’ll walk through the evidence of this shift.

    Ukraine aid
    The Senate has passed an additional $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, with both Republican and Democratic support. But the House, which Republicans control, has so far refused to pass that bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is close to Trump, has not allowed a vote on the bill even though it would likely pass if he did.

    A few Republicans have gone so far as speak about Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in ways that mimic Russian propaganda. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused Ukraine of having “a Nazi army,” echoing language Putin used to justify the invasion.

    Military experts say that if Ukraine does not receive more U.S. aid, it could begin losing the war in the second half of this year. “Not since the first chaotic months of the invasion, when Russian troops poured across the borders from every direction and the country rose up en masse to resist, has Ukraine faced such a precarious moment,” wrote our colleagues Andrew Kramer and Marc Santora, who have been reporting from Ukraine.

    (Related: Ukrainians who live to the west of the recently captured Avdiivka are poised to flee in the face of a Russian onslaught.)

    Alexander Smirnov
    House Republicans hoping to impeach President Biden have repeatedly promoted information that appears to have been based partly on Russian disinformation. One example: The Republicans cited an F.B.I. document in which an informant accused Biden and his son, Hunter, of taking $5 million bribes from the owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.

    But federal prosecutors have now accused the informant, Alexander Smirnov, of fabricating the allegation to damage Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Smirnov has told the F.B.I. that people linked to Russian intelligence passed him information about Hunter Biden.

    A federal judge has ordered Smirnov detained and called him a flight risk.

    Tucker Carlson
    Tucker Carlson is not a Republican Party official, but he is an influential Trump supporter, and Carlson has often echoed Russian propaganda. At least once, he went so far as to say he hoped Russia would win its war against Ukraine.

    Last month, Carlson aired a two-hour interview with Putin in which Putin made false claims about Ukraine, Zelensky and Western leaders with little pushback from Carlson. In a separate video recorded inside a Russian grocery store, Carlson suggested life in Russia was better than in the U.S. (Watch Jon Stewart debunk those claims here.)

    Republican voters
    The shift in elite Republican opinion toward Russia and away from Ukraine has influenced public opinion.

    Shortly after Russia invaded, about three-quarters of Republicans favored giving Ukraine military and economic aid, according to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Now, only about half do.

    Republican voters are also less likely to hold favorable views of Zelensky. In one poll, most Trump-aligned Republicans even partly blamed him for the war. Republicans also support NATO at lower rates than Democrats and independents, a shift from the 1980s.

    More on the war
    “Donald Trump views himself as a Putinesque, dictatorial figure,” Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House leader, has said. “We should believe him that he wants to go down this road.” Jeffries also told The Times how he hoped Ukraine aid could pass.
    The Biden administration is considering giving Ukraine weapons from Pentagon stockpiles even though it lacks money to replace them, a short-term bid to aid Ukraine until Congress acts.
    Putin warned that direct Western intervention in Ukraine would risk nuclear war, alluding in a speech to the French president’s recent comments about sending NATO troops there.
    Trump plans to meet next week with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister.

    There is more in that Morning Newsletter, … you may want to search for it. Most of it is behind a paywall. But if you quickly punch an “easy reader” function, it generally captures it all.

    … fwiw,

    F.S.

    #153840
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Repeating this week: “Democratic Party elites such as those on CNN are not just angry but genuinely confused by the fact that American voters don’t obey them.” — Glenn Greenwald

    Air-dropping straightjackets nationwide is the best idea I’ve had in a long time.

    #153841
    zerosum
    Participant

    Small Sample.
    Russophobia,

    The narrative controllers.
    (You are free to think what we allow)

    “If Ukraine gets the aid, they will win the war and beat Russia.”
    “Russia cannot and must not win this war,”

    direct evidence is ‘crude Russian propaganda.’
    spin-out-of-control
    Putin understands that the West intends Russia’s destruction,

    Rude, disrespectful
    Putin was called by the President of the United States “the new Hitler” and “a son-of-a-bitch.”

    (impolite, bad-mannered, ill-mannered, mannerless, unmannerly, and discourteous.
    A word that suggests that a person doesn’t know how to interact with others—or doesn’t care how they do—is tactless.
    Words that suggest a more active, deliberate rudeness are disrespectful, insolent, and impertinent.)

    The New York Times story?
    “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin”
    The history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present.

    Why?
    To influence the Congressional budget deliberations on aid to Ukraine?
    “If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

    We had already seen reporting that the CIA had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine and that the U.S. government was training Ukrainian special forces and Ukrainian pilots, 12 “secret” bases so there’s nothing new there.

    We get a very partial picture of the CIA’s doings in Ukraine, as the lies of omission—not to mention the lies of commission—are numerous in this piece. But what The Times published last weekend, all 5,500 words of it, tells us more than had been previously made public.

    ———-

    #153843
    Dora
    Participant

    Kunstler.

    The Blob Quivers

    #153844
    zerosum
    Participant

    Truth. Bankers don’t care.
    The Biden administration is considering giving Ukraine weapons from Pentagon stockpiles even though it lacks money to replace them,

    #153845
    zerosum
    Participant

    The majority of people are happiest when they can hate and be angry.

    #153847
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @zerosum

    The majority of people are happiest when they can hate and be angry.”

    That’s not really true at all. The truth is that when one is at a certain position on the scale of awareness of what is going on around them then they see what’s around in a particular way, or through a certain emotional filter. For example, the statement you made above. It looks true to you now because you’re in a particular mood and state of awareness. But look back to the best days of your life. On those days did it seem true to you that the majority of people are happiest when they can hate and be angry?

    #153848
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Thanks to Celticbiker yesterday for mentioning “it’s satanic”

    Nice, lifelong feminist atheist liberals like Naomi Wolf came out saying “holy fuck, it’s… how else do I describe, articulate, conceptualize it? It’s satanic” Nice atheist liberals who Believe In The Science like Brett Weinstein, Benjamin Boyce, James Lindsey getting there or already there. For lack of a better term, best-usage, most pragmatic for right now as we drill down on that – what do we MEAN by satanic, what IS it, why, how does that work, actually? Why does it ring so true?

    How else do we easily make reference to it with a word or two? So that’s what works for now.

    EVEN NUKING THEM WOULDN’T WAKE THEM UP. You think a crack ho, sleeping in a squat on a filthy carpet next to some needles is like “Hey, I’m perfectly aware of my surroundings and situation and I approve this message”? No. Once you get lost in your mind, even dying won’t wake you up. Beatings won’t wake you up. Starving won’t wake you up. Mockery won’t wake you up (clearly).

    That’s us and that’s me.

    And it is becoming increasingly apparent that yes, world events affecting millions, billions are and have been transpiring on the basis of this… “satanic”…. something? By this amorphous awful blob? To do anything meaningful today, don’t you need to at least understand your own values so you can stand on your own two feet, either to do something good or meet whatever unfolds next facing it, standing? MAYBE I know it when I see it. Good and bad, right and wrong. Can I even articulate WHY or am I a congenital moral idiot? And if we’re ALL morally retarded, how the fuck DOES anything wake us up?

    How many lies did I internalize over the years of my life? Not discrete “facts” that were lies but the underlying values, background knowledge assumptions, morals, the most basic assumptions about what it is to exist in the world as an animal, a mammal, a primate, a human? The underlying ways of processing reality, experience, being alive.

    How much of me is MADE OF these lies and worse-than-lies? And someone like ME is going to turn around, stop the lies, stop the horrible satanic (for lack of a better word for this atheist to use) millwheel? How much of me is good human being aligned with logos and how much is satanic cancer? What are the chances for this operation, mr surgeon? Is it more like the human is being amputated off the cancer, the cancer is 70% of my mass? The cancer has a case of humanity, but it looks fairly benign and there’s an 80% chance of beating it.

    But it’s The Way Things Are. It’s Just How We Do Things. And we do what we do because it’s what we do.

    My whole life I’ve listened to Boomers (a particular segment of them, sorry you other guys) saying “We Have To Take Action” or “XYZ Thing Is Wrong, But If We Act Now”, “Raise Awareness”, on and on. Fucking buttons on backpacks and jeans jacket lapels – John Lennon: Imagine. Fuck. A lifetime of watching overly moralistic people claiming to be free from superstitions and sillyness of the past going from one silly (it is now apparent, superstitious) thing to another usually making things worse. But at least we stopped that gosh darn Vietnam War. (Now you’re claiming to be Nixon???)

    So now I shall become a Doer, a Tryer, Effecting Change, Imagining Whirled Peas and so on? The important thing is to be effusive and self-righteous and get going on that? When more than half my shit is based on nonsense and lies? When I more than half pray to the Devil when I posture as being righteous and holy – metaphorically speaking of course. When I am implicitly satanic, revile people with satanic outlooks and then go right to it myself in my own private thinking, wishes, desires, understanding of the world?

    I’ve been thinking what to do with my time. Assuming it could take another year or so to find another job, I had damn well better find something to DO that isn’t just waiting around being useless to everyone. Maybe I was supposed to be a White Hat in that company I left. Maybe I was exactly what they needed, considering how screwed up they were and I missed my chance to really factor into the equation. Well, I may still email the owner letting them know what is wrong. Probably his email is managed by someone and it will never reach him, but I suppose it is my duty to try. I’ve got a rough draft going.

    I’ve got a few talents, non-pragmatically useful as they are. I thought maybe I could try to do a multidisciplinary creative work FOR the whitehats, sort of. Or maybe the people who missed the white hat boat. I was admiring Lord of the Rings yet again, how Tolkien managed to make such a deep, intricate world, fully integrated top to bottom with meaning and wisdom. Maybe I could try making something abstractly along those lines, integrated across multiple disciplines, integrated with meaning in the way Jordan Peterson would describe it? How useless would that be, and in any case, as I consider this top-to-bottom integration with meaning, I realize how cancerous I am, the danger of a 70% cancer entity making artistic/intellectual/spiritual/philosophical material is likely to make it 70% cancerous and a biohazard to any who approach. By virtue OF wanting to insert itself spiritually, philosophically.

    And how do you know right from wrong? Er… I’ll know it when I see it? Dunno? I’ll tell you forthrightly, then contradict it? 2020 at least woke me up to there being something, however amorphous, I’m definitely don’t want to be on the side of, that there ARE at least directions on the compass? Actually attempting to make this integrated creative work has just been showing me where I am actually at.

    How easy would it still be to seduce me, by one method or another, to the wrong thing? Why do I even say “still” in that sentence? Surely the alternative media, news, information gets planted with false information, misleading values? Right here at TAE, wouldn’t They? And I’ll be so smug as I am one who knows….

    More and more, I realize and am horrified that my private, personal circumstances growing up have been writ large, imprinted on the millenial and genz generations. Narc parents, Narc significant others, and an undiagnosed case of sleep apnea on a skinny guy amongst other factors. Demoralization and discouragement. What is “stymie” as a state of being? Stymification? I’m looking and seeing Narc psychological abuse adopted as institutional across education, media, entertainment, ngo’s, corporatons, government. Civilizationally. Debilitating whole generations, populations. Am I projecting my own experience or have I merely been training for this moment all my life?

    I mean, this is what made billions accept the notavax, war, genocide, the increasing cancellation of human rights, the end of free speech isn’t it? All the individual people, their values, the society’s values that build up to this. That I help build.

    And what am I supposed to do, become a wild eyed far right extremist gunman, go after the secretary of the secretary of the assistant to the regional manager of the director of the CEO who does the bidding of some billionaire who is just a cat’s paw for some shadowy someone or something? I fucking think not. That untersecretary Jeanie, has 2 kids, loves small furry animals, volunteers at the local soup kitchen, and sews her own upholstery. And if the white hats showed up to recruit me, somehow, somewhere, I would surely have to turn them down. They will only turn into FBI agents trying to get me to accept “inert materials.” When recruiting white hats approach, immediately adopt a lie flat position, close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears, and repeat Your Mantra: Lalalalalalala…. ah, fuck.

    you navel gazin mutherfuckers are completely full of shit. If I travelled back in time, 100 years and picked the dumbest lookin mongoloid I could find, he’d have 10X the common sense of anyone I meet today

    Yes. Agreed. We’re sick. We’ve been made sick. We’re now 70% made of cancer. How we untangle that, how we get un-sick, how we excise that cancer, how we determine which thing TO excise so we are not cutting away humanity, decency, is the challenge of this age. How to stop automatically cooperating, participating, #helping.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnyycPLJrSY

    Everybody in the funhouse
    Says they want out
    But we’re taking our time
    ‘Cos we’re in love with time

    Whole generations thinking of themselves
    As infidels and pop stars
    While the bomb loses patience
    We line up and just lean against the bar

    Caught in the headlights
    Wide-eyed and ready to receive
    We are the dead life
    Locked in dogfights, lost in disbelief

    And these dark days
    Make the nights seem brighter than they are
    So while Fleet Street rolls and the moon glows
    In the funhouse the fun starts

    Born in the half-light
    Of threats and bribes
    In a hopeless porn parade
    We get the dog’s life, tidbits train us
    What to wear, what not to say

    When you’re footloose but you just feel limbless
    Life gets in the way
    So we get loaded or totally legless
    But stay the same

    Stone cold sober, looking for bottles of love

    #153849
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @jb-hb

    If you just keep looking around, digging for true answers, and examining stuff encountered with the same sort of cognitive integrity so strongly evidenced in the comment you just posted, then you’re going to be fine. Eventually. After experiencing a few more shit-tons of pain. You’re on the road to truth. That’s what it feels like when you decide to stop being a fool and a shit-heel and turn upward toward the light.

    Incidentally, you claim to be an atheist but you’re not going to be an atheist for long. Just because Con Men pimp and pump various “religions” of every description does not mean that there is no God. It just means that Con Men know what everybody is searching for and see “religion” as a means of making a quick buck and gain power by selling folks a ticket to the promised land that’s a “guaranteed” winner every time (when it ain’t).

    #153850
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Sarmat and the like have so much kinetic energy upon delivery that you likely get a satisfactory pop from an empty chassis. Maybe even approaching bunker buster levels. Now imagine 100kg of gold, completely passive warhead, delivered on Whitehall. Tumor excised, and something for the peasants to use in reconstruction efforts.

    #153851
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Another one bites the dust:

    CHP Incident 240301LA0293

    Mar 1 2024 4:05AM
    CFIRE-Car Fire
    Big Tujunga Canyon Rd / Big Tujunga Dam Rd

    Mar 1 2024 8:58AM [12] [Rotation Request Comment] 1039 GIRARD and PETERSON TOW (XXX) XXX-XXXX ETA 30 OR LESS- COPYS FULLY BURNED ELECTRIC VEH BIG TUJUNGA CANYON MM 6.65
    Mar 1 2024 8:56AM [11] LL 1185
    Mar 1 2024 8:56AM [10] A98-065 COLA, PLS ROLL 1185 FOR FULLY BURNED ELECTRIC VEH
    Mar 1 2024 8:55AM [9] Incident 240301LA0293 was reopened. Comment: Incident Reopened : REQ 1185 FOR FULLY BURNED ELECTRIC VEH
    Mar 1 2024 5:57AM [8] C98-062 HEALTH INSPECTOR 97 ADV TO MONITOR VEH FOR 4 HOURS UNTIL 0930 HRS // NOT REQ CHP TO 1023 // JUST REQ TO RE-RESPOND AT 0930 W/ 1185
    Mar 1 2024 4:43AM [7] C98-062 VEH 1124
    Mar 1 2024 4:36AM [5] C98-062 ON BIG TUJUNGA CANYON RD AT MM 6.65 // FD 1023ING W/ ELECTRIC VEH FOR HEALTH- HAZMAT ETA 1-1.5 HORS
    Mar 1 2024 4:06AM [2] ALL THEY CAN ADVS IS VEH FIRE

    Information courtesy of

    Last updated: 03/01/2024 10:04am

    #153852
    zerosum
    Participant

    Manipulators find it easier to motivate people with hate and anger.
    ie. RussiaRussiaRussia

    #153853
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Now imagine 100kg of gold, completely passive warhead, delivered on Whitehall.

    After Tomyris found out about the death of [her son] Spargapises, she sent Cyrus an angry message in which she called the wine, which had caused the destruction of her army and her son, a drug which made those who consumed it so mad that they spoke evil words, and demanded him to leave her land or else she would, swearing upon the Sun, “give him more blood than he could drink.”

    Tomyris herself led the Massagetaean army into war, and, during the next battle opposing the Massagetae to the forces of Cyrus, Tomyris defeated the Persians and destroyed most of their army. Cyrus himself was killed in the battle, and Tomyris found his corpse, severed his head and put it in a bag filled with blood while telling Cyrus, “Drink your fill of blood!”

    #153854
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/1/israels-war-on-gaza-live-mass-shooting-of-aid-seekers-condemned-globally?update=2741355

    US blocks UNSC statement that would have blamed Israel for Gaza City massacre
    The US has blocked a statement put forward by Algeria to the UN Security Council that would have assigned blame to Israel for the killing of more than 100 Palestinians awaiting food aid in northern Gaza.

    Palestine’s UN ambassador, Riyad Mansour, told reporters that the statement was backed by all of the UNSC’s 15 members except the US.

    Explaining the decision to block the statement, US Ambassador Robert Wood said, “We don’t have all the facts on the ground – that’s the problem.”

    He said that the US is trying to verify the “circumstances around how people died” to see if “we can find some language that everyone can agree on”.

    Robert Wood, deputy permanent representative of the United States to the United Nations, speaks to delegates during a security council meeting at the United Nations Headquarters, Monday, Jan. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
    Robert Wood, deputy permanent representative of the US to the United Nations, speaks during a UN Security Council meeting in January 2024 [Eduardo Munoz

    #153855
    zerosum
    Participant

    Not with impunity

    Change of Tactics – Resistance Roundup – Day 146


    Change of Tactics – Resistance Roundup – Day 146
    February 29, 2024
    A new tactic seems to be on full display in the way that the Palestinian Resistance is conducting its strategy throughout the Gaza Strip.
    ———-

    #153856
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Yeah, that’s the land where Wonder Woman was from. Although hard to fully diagnose: the Scythians.

    They moved south to an island by Greece, how the Amazons got their fame. NORTH of Greece, something we don’t think of out here. That is to say the Black Sea, UKRAINE. Snake Island, who knows?

    Tough neighborhood. Now drink your fill of blood, you maniacs.

    #153857
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Root of scythe and scimitar I bet. 🙂

    #153858
    jb-hb
    Participant

    “My loyalties, they were confused”

    “Listen to me, you deaf fuck. I offered you the chance to be a cop and you blew it. You blew it.”

    #153859
    zerosum
    Participant

    Two side to a story??
    Is this where to find the second side?

    GAZA LIVE BLOG: Israel Bombs Khan Yunis School | Israeli Army in ‘State of Shock’ | Bureij Homes Shelled | Resistance Continues – Day 147

    GAZA LIVE BLOG: Israel Bombs Khan Yunis School | Israeli Army in ‘State of Shock’ | Bureij Homes Shelled | Resistance Continues – Day 147

    #153860
    zerosum
    Participant

    Manipulators find it easier to motivate people with hate and anger.
    ie. RussiaRussiaRussia
    Read more

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/03/lloyd-austin-doubts-protective-value-of-nato.html#comments
    Lloyd Austin Doubts Protective Value Of NATO
    Newsweek is lying with this headline:

    NATO Will Be Drawn Into War With Russia if Ukraine Loses: Lloyd Austin

    #153863
    SeaBirds
    Participant

    ‘True intelligence is about being conscious of the world around you, and knowing how to navigate within.’

    Competent, sensible and rational thinking is all you need. Intelligence is only a word, and those that think they have it tend to fall in love with it.

    #153864
    John Day
    Participant

    @jb-hb: Try vegetable gardening, if you can. It helps direct the mind, somehow. Bike riding where it’s safe and pretty is good, too.

    #153865
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “Incidentally, you claim to be an atheist but you’re not going to be an atheist for long. Just because Con Men pimp and pump various “religions” of every description does not mean that there is no God. It just means that Con Men know what everybody is searching for and see “religion” as a means of making a quick buck and gain power by selling folks a ticket to the promised land that’s a “guaranteed” winner every time (when it ain’t).”k

    I’ve heard it been said that charlatans, false prophets, megachurches, and the like act like a gauntlet to filter out all those who would only waste the time and be a burden to a true master. That allows him (or her) to focus on those students who are ready and would most benefit from direct instruction. Even if some that are still green in their development somehow make it past the gauntlet, they would quickly be repelled by getting metaphorically punched in the face every day – their egos would not be able to take the searing heat and dissection of their character.

    Which reminds me of another quote from the same book as mentions the previous posts. Yes, Yogananda again, sorry:

    “If you don’t like my words, you are at liberty to leave at any time,” Master assured me. “I want nothing from you but your own improvement. Stay only if you feel benefited.” For every humbling blow he dealt my vanity, for every tooth in my metaphorical jaw he knocked loose with stunning aim, I am grateful beyond any facility of expression. The hard core of human egotism is hardly to be dislodged except rudely. With its departure, the Divine finds at last an unobstructed channel. In vain It seeks to percolate through flinty hearts of selfishness.

    That’s not to say that the hurdles we face in searching for spiritual truth are cruel and demonic. It often seems so, but when you look at the bell curve of humanity, how many really are ready to hear and conform their lives to higher laws? To walk the knife’s edge? To wander the in the desert for 40 years – endure the dark night of the soul and have the hell burned out of them? And please don’t crowd and cut in line.

    So, where do they go for instruction, one which is suited for them? Organized religions, megachurches, and the likef, and get stuck in the fly papers of dogma and external authorities in their wanderings.

    #153866
    WES
    Participant

    USD sets new record low today!

    MSM’s Fake Reality: Gold set a new record high price in USD today, read all the headlines.

    Truth: Today the USD set a new record low price against gold.

    Gold didn’t change in value. The USD fiat fell in value to a new record low today. That means you are poorer! Gold is not richer. Gold is the same as it ever was.

    #153867
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Newsflash: can someone check me on this. As all Ukraine goes to s–t, Germany throws starts throwing dead weight overboard and says that England is the one who had ENGLISH NATO operators there, shooting ENGLISH Stormeshadow missiles that took out the Kersh Bridge.

    Soooooo….NATO is already there, with boots on the ground, shooting Russia. Well hell.

    At least we all knew that already.

    “As rats from a sinking ship, so are the days of their lives…”

    BearwithMe

    #153868
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Russian GRU wiretaps German Generals discussing destroying the Kerch Bridge – 1 step closer to WW3

    Wehrmacht plans a come back victory of the Steppes!

    HAhahahahahahahahahahahaha!

    #153869
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Waldman and Schaller (I wonder where they worship?) on Mika Brzezinski’s MSNBC pointing The Pen at the real problem in the world for guys like Gonzalo Lira and the beleaguered Palestinians.
    White Rural Americans…..white rural rage.
    Do you think Waldman and Schaller include Mennonites and Amishes (sp?) in their scholarly calculus?
    Do you think those Amishes and Mennonites eschew the city, urban and Biden-led overclass because they PREFER living among those not-so-rageful White Rural Americans?
    Did Dr D do a Vulcan mind-meld on the firm of Waldman & Schaller or has the world, the vaunted readers of the world, lost the ability to distinguish between self-destructive behavior, Lira’s, and self-sacrifice, Bushnell’s?
    Scott Ritter for egging him on and Volodymyr Zelensky jewish President of Ukraine ( you know the 99.9% non-jewish country) for failing his duty to Prisoner Gonzalo deserve the Lion’s share of credit for Lira’s death in a Ukranian government jail cell.
    Bushnell’s decision was his alone.

    #153870
    jb-hb
    Participant

    If anyone is curious about any boots-on-the ground economic indicators, here’s some things I noticed on the job search:

    There are companies trying to hire for $12.50 an hour.

    There are companies hiring at $18 an hour that are requiring a bachelor’s degree.

    There are companies still requiring the notavax for employment

    There are companies listing woke word salad – need to be aware of privilege, power disparities, and work constantly to do better etc etc.as a job requirement.

    I came across that Bloomberg article again. I would have said it was a conspiracy theory if I didn’t see it on Bloomberg that corporate America’s hires last year were like 84% black 4% white. They did not say how much of the 4% was male but I would bet you a billion gagilllion dollars it broke down to less than 2%. Mind boggling. It presents certain challenges.

    New plan for getting a job:

    1. Divorce wife (that’s the key to all of this)
    2. Go to Mexico
    3. Apply skin bronzer
    4. Throw away passport
    5. Cross border
    6. Claim benefits, $10,000 gift card, free phone, etc
    7. Start life under my new name Rico Suave (hey, that’s what I choose. get your own name)
    8. Marry wife to gain citizenship
    9. Apply for and acquire bilingual customer care job as recent asylum recipient and minority
    10. Purchase a 1965 FenderJazzmaster with my free walking around money

    #153871
    WES
    Participant

    Yeah, NATO has a nice little racket going on. They say to their own weapon trained soldiers we will pay you double or triple to man the weapons in the Ukraine, all the while knowing these NATO soldiers will likely be killed by the Russians. Once killed, NATO doesn’t have to pay these soldiers and can deny they ever existed!

    Ukrainian government is only demobilizing soldiers if they pay a $5,000 USD plus fee. Once demobilized, there is no guarantee they won’t be promptly re-conscripted back to the front again! Nice new money making racket! Gotta grab as much money as you can before the war gig ends!

    The Ukrainian war runs on corruption. Once the money runs out, the war is over!

    Ukrainian second and third defensive lines often only exist on paper. Contractors say why actually build anything when the war is already lost, so they just pocket the money!

    As the Ukrainians retreat, the Russians are destroying more armored vehicles than before because the retreating Ukrainians have to bring all of their hidden vehicles out of their hiding spots into the open!

    I don’t believe the Russians have any plans at the moment to create any quick break throughs. First of all they do not want to exceed their current railway based logistics supply lines. Second, by going slowly they are giving the west’s elites more time to come to their senses. Third, there are still too many Nazis left that need killing.

    Or put another way, for the west’s elites to hear the voices of their little people, whom, up to now, they have not wanted to listen to. We can only hope our crazy elites do come to their senses, one by one.

    Since 10% of Europeans still believe Ukraine can win, the job isn’t done yet.

    #153872
    WES
    Participant

    Ritter is a German surname. It means “grave digger”!

    #153875
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Hilarious AI video of ‘world leaders’ breaking it down

    A true mindfucker

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1763589808671145986

    #153876
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    Remember the tik tok dancers during covid, doctors, nurses cops, whatever, worldwide? A whole bunch were dancing to a tune called Jerusalema by Nomecedo Zikode. If the title doesn’t alarm you, check out the lyrics.

    #153877

    Artificial: made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.

    Car Fifty-four, where are you?

    #153879
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    ritter = knight
    .too

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