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Debt Rattle March 15 2024

Mar 152024
 
 March 15, 2024  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  Add comments


Vincent van Gogh Lilac Bush 1889

 

• US Has Created ‘Frankenstein’ States – Galloway (RT)
• NATO’s ‘Welfare’ States: Treating the U.S. As ‘Room Service’ (Hoekstra)
• US Intelligence ‘Threat Assessment’ Says Hamas Isn’t Going Away (Antiwar)
• Scenario for Military Takeover of Ukrainian Parliament Was Written by US (Sp.)
• France Mulled ‘Boots On The Ground’ In Ukraine Since June – Le Monde (RT)
• Medvedev Responds To Zelensky ‘Peace Plan’ (RT)
• EU Members Oppose Plan To Arm Kiev With Russian Money – Politico (RT)
• Kremlin Slams US ‘Distortion’ Of Putin’s Words On Nuclear Weapons (RT)
• Trump Unlikely To Win – Macron (RT)
• US in ‘Constant State of Neo-McCarthyism’ – Sleboda (Sp.)
• The U.S. Is Not a Democracy and Can’t Be Reformed (Barton)
• Musk Cancels X Partnership Deal With Don Lemon (RT)
• Canada Moves to Impose Potential Life Imprisonment for Speech Crimes (Turley)
• 973% SURGE in Heart Failure Among Navy Pilots (DW)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Malaysia PM

 

 

Elon

 

 

 

 

@Judgenap: Congress has no right to ban TikTok

 

 

Tucker TikTok

 

 

 

 

“When you make a monster… it’s no longer yours. It’s a monster that can do monstrous things..”

• US Has Created ‘Frankenstein’ States – Galloway (RT)

The American policy of giving billions in aid to Ukraine and Israel has created “monster” states, British MP George Galloway has claimed. Appearing on Rick Sanchez’s show Direct Impact broadcast on RT, Galloway discussed the debate surrounding Western aid to Ukraine, as well as the rift between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the situation in Gaza. In the latest row between Biden and Netanyahu, the US president has insisted that an Israeli assault on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza – where around 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge – would be a “red line.” Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead regardless, arguing that his own red line is ensuring that the October 7 Hamas attack “never happens again.”

Comparing Washington to the fictional scientist Frankenstein, Galloway told Sanchez: “When you make a monster… it’s no longer yours. It’s a monster that can do monstrous things. And that’s what they have done with Netanyahu and people like him who now run Israel.” Israel is the biggest cumulative recipient of US military aid, being provided with around $3.8 billion worth of weapons and defense systems each year. Galloway also used the Frankenstein analogy to refer to the Ukrainian government, which he claimed has become a “client state” that now “tells the paymaster what to do.”

“Ukraine treats us now as if we owe them rather than them having been on the end of endless subventions of money and material. Now the Ukrainian leadership insults the people that gave them so much, hundreds of billions of dollars,” Galloway argued. Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accused his country’s Western supporters of “playing internal political games” while criticizing them for delays in allocating aid. Ukrainian first lady Elena Zelenskaya declined an invitation last week to attend Biden’s State of the Union address, citing a busy schedule. The US has already doled out around $45 billion in military aid to Kiev. A foreign aid bill that would include another $60 billion in military support has been stalled in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

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Make NATO a defensive alliance again and your problems are over.

• NATO’s ‘Welfare’ States: Treating the U.S. As ‘Room Service’ (Hoekstra)

Last month, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg conceded what former US President Donald Trump has been warning about for nearly a decade: America’s allies are not paying their fair share — as they had agreed — for national defense. After four years in which Trump held our NATO allies accountable for funding their share of NATO’s collective defense, US President Joe Biden has once again allowed many of them to pass significant burdens of NATO spending on to American taxpayers – threatening the security of the NATO alliance in the process. The very nature of alliances is that they are a two-way street. Americans should rightly expect to realize benefits from U.S. participation in NATO, just as the citizens of other NATO nations can expect to benefit from their country’s relationship with the United States.

Indeed, that was the original idea behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when it was founded in 1949. In the wake of WWII, 12 nations agreed to band together to guard against the threat of the Soviet Union, a number that has now grown to 32 with the recent addition of Sweden. The NATO alliance today, however, more closely resembles an international welfare program than a true alliance, with most countries failing to meet their defense commitments and instead relying on the generosity of the United States. As the eminent journalist Amir Taheri put it: “others… treat the US as a ‘room service’ reachable by pressing a button…” In 2014, every NATO member agreed to allocate just 2% of their nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) to defense spending. This minimum baseline target is crucial to ensuring military readiness in the face of growing threats from hostile nations such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

A decade later, 19 out of 32 NATO member nations have failed to meet this goal. Moreover, most of those countries that have reached the 2% target, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Greece, are smaller nations with smaller GDPs. The United States, meanwhile, accounts for a staggering 70% of all NATO defense spending — even though the combined GDP of the other 31 member nations is roughly equal to that of the United States. Germany, by far the richest NATO member behind the United States, allocates just 1.57% of its GDP to defense spending. The combined population of these 31 NATO member states, at more than 620 million, also now dwarfs that of the United States, at 333 million. In other words, each American citizen is now effectively responsible for funding the national defense of two people in another NATO nation. The situation in Europe today is far different than at the founding of NATO, when many nations were still relying on the Marshall Plan funding to be rebuilt.

Our NATO allies have highly advanced economies and immensely capable citizens. American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize their national defense. If NATO is to function as an effective deterrent to military aggression from Russia and other adversaries, there seriously needs to be a new commitment by every NATO member state to invest in a strong national defense. Yet, the failure of our European allies to meet their spending commitments means they are woefully unprepared from a military standpoint to defend their countries – thus endangering the United States as well as themselves by threatening to draw America into war unnecessarily because of European weakness. President Trump wisely recognized this threat and accordingly made holding our NATO allies accountable a top priority of his foreign policy. Under his leadership, NATO member countries increased their defense spending by $350 billion.

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And neither are the Houthis. You got yourself a big problem.

• US Intelligence ‘Threat Assessment’ Says Hamas Isn’t Going Away (Antiwar)

An annual “threat assessment” compiled by US intelligence agencies was released on Monday and said that Israel will likely face resistance from Hamas for years to come, another sign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated goal of “eradicating” the Palestinian group isn’t realistic. “Israel probably will face lingering armed resistance from HAMAS for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralize HAMAS’s underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces,” the assessment reads. The assessment aligns with an Israeli military intelligence document that was circulated last month and said even if Israel succeeded in dismantling Hamas as an organized military force, the group would still exist as “a terror group and a guerrilla group.” Other reports have said Israel is struggling to destroy the vast tunnel network underneath Gaza that is key to Hamas’s survival and is far more expansive than Israel initially thought.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q. Brown, the highest ranking US military officer, previously said that Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza will be a recruiting boon for Hamas. “The faster you can get to a point where you stop the hostilities, you have less strife for the civilian population that turns into someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas,” Brown said in November. Despite believing Netanyahu’s goal is unrealistic, the US continues to provide unconditional military support for Israel’s genocidal war, which has killed at least over 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The Biden administration is trying to distance itself from Netanyahu by criticizing his government, but the rhetoric hasn’t amounted to a policy change. The US threat assessment said that while Hamas isn’t going away, Netanyahu could lose his hold on power. “Netanyahu’s viability as leader as well as his governing coalition of far-right and ultraorthodox parties that pursued hardline policies on Palestinian and security issues may be in jeopardy.

Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war, and we expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections. A different, more moderate government is a possibility,” the report says. The assessment also said that Iran had no role in Hamas’s October 7 attack and acknowledged Tehran is not seeking a nuclear weapon. “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device,” the report reads. The report acknowledges that Iran’s increases in uranium enrichment since the US tore up the nuclear deal in 2018 were to gain leverage for negotiations, not seek a bomb. “Iran uses its nuclear program to build negotiating leverage and respond to perceived international pressure,” the assessment says.

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“..none of the Ukrainian military and intelligence structures is independent: each of them has either British or US “supervisors..”

• Scenario for Military Takeover of Ukrainian Parliament Was Written by US (Sp.)

A takeover of the Ukrainian Parliament by the nation’s military would not be a grass-roots movement, “Other Ukraine” expert Alexander Dudchak told Sputnik, suggesting that the potential rebellion has been orchestrated from the West. The disillusioned Ukrainian military is planning a takeover of the Ukrainian Parliament or Verkhovna Rada, an exchange from private Telegram channel Parabelum obtained by Sputnik reveals. “This could be a scenario of replacing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky without holding elections,” Alexander Dudchak, researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries and expert of the ‘Other Ukraine’ movement, told Sputnik. The members of the classified chat, composed of commanders and soldiers of elite units of the Ukrainian armed forces, were discussing options for overthrowing the present government and the command of the Ukrainian armed forces following the sacking of Commander-in-Chief General Valery Zaluzhny.

“The most important action that we will need to pull off lightning fast is the takeover of the VR [Verkhovna Rada] at a certain point,” one of the chat members wrote. They also expressed dissatisfaction with Zelensky’s decisions and the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, who was appointed a month ago to replace Zaluzhny. The alleged coup plotters placed special emphasis on involving Ukrainian troops fighting at the frontline in the anti-Zelensky movement. According to the researcher, engaging Ukrainian active duty personnel is fraught with risks, given that those in the trenches are closely monitored by foreign mercenaries from ‘barrier detachments’ with orders to shoot any who leave their positions against orders. If Ukrainian troops are allowed to march towards Kiev that would mean that the regime-change scenario was written in Washington in response to Zelensky’s refusal to hold elections this year, Dudchak argued.

Leaders of elite Ukrainian units, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the nationalist Azov and Aidar battalions are also reportedly planning to create a radical party with a military wing. The expert insists that none of the Ukrainian military and intelligence structures is independent: each of them has either British or US “supervisors”. “The confrontation between the military and the Kiev regime is in general a manifestation of the confrontation between London and Washington,” said Dudchak. “The office of the president is under British control, while the military, who supposedly will gather in the name of Zaluzhny, are under Americans, plus the SBU is also a US-backed structure.” The consequences for Kiev would be dramatic and could seriously complicate the Ukrainian military’s positions at the frontline, the researcher concluded.

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“..we are ready to use the means to achieve our objective – which is that Russia does not win..”

• France Mulled ‘Boots On The Ground’ In Ukraine Since June – Le Monde (RT)

The idea of sending Western troops to Ukraine was secretly discussed in Paris as early as last June, months before French President Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to keep all options on the table to defeat Russia, according to Le Monde. The subject was raised at a defense council at the Elysee Palace in June 2023, soon after Kiev launched its much-touted counteroffensive, the French newspaper wrote on Thursday. “The role of the military is to always prepare the maximum number of possible options, in order to help with the political-military decision of the President of the Republic,” Chief of Staff of the French Army, Pierre Schill, told the paper. Macron’s recent public statements are “foremost a political and strategic message” to Russia about France’s “will and commitment,” rather than an escalation, the general argued.

Following a summit of Ukraine’s sponsors hosted in Paris in late February, Macron said there was no consensus on sending troops in any official manner, but claimed that “in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything.” The controversial statement prompted a wave of objections from NATO members, including the US, UK, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic. The US-led bloc’s chief has declared outright that “NATO has no plans to send troops to Ukraine.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said there will be “no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries,” and that the bloc’s leaders were “unanimous as far as this question is concerned.” However, the French leader has stood behind his words, repeatedly reiterating that nothing must be excluded to make sure that Russia is defeated in Ukraine.

“We must, with determination, will and courage, say that we are ready to use the means to achieve our objective – which is that Russia does not win,” Macron again said in a televised interview to TF1 and France 2 on Thursday. While refusing to draw red lines, Macron said France would never initiate an offensive against Russia, even as he called Moscow an “adversary.” The latest rift between the leaders of France and Germany has exacerbated an already strained relationship, as Macron allegedly made his comments “against express wishes of Scholz’s office,” Bloomberg wrote early in March. The heads of the two states are set to meet in Berlin on Friday in an effort to reduce tensions over Ukraine, Politico wrote on Wednesday, while Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk will join the meeting later in the day.

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“A “reasonable” peace agreement with Ukraine would involve Moscow taking full control over the country..”

• Medvedev Responds To Zelensky ‘Peace Plan’ (RT)

A “reasonable” peace agreement with Ukraine would involve Moscow taking full control over the country, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. The senior official mocked the peace plan proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which has been backed by the West as the only way to end the conflict with Russia. First unveiled in late 2022, the proposal amounts to Moscow conceding military defeat, according to the Russian leadership. “Everyone, including those brazen Western liars, understands that even in a less complicated situation peace can be achieved either through reasonable compromise or after one of the sides capitulates,” Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of the Security Council, wrote on social media on Thursday. Since the Ukrainian proposal can only be taken with “loathing” and a “sense of shame,” Medvedev said he had come up with a “soft” alternative.

This would involve formal capitulation by Kiev, the dissolution of the Ukrainian government, and the UN-monitored election of a new parliament. The new legislature in Kiev would be tasked with paying reparations to Russia and ultimately ratifying a treaty of union, under which Moscow would assume full sovereignty over Ukraine. “This is a compromise position, right?” Medvedev added, addressing Western nations. “I believe that based on it, we can find a friendly consensus with the international community, including the Anglosphere, hold productive summits counting on mutual understanding with our close friends, the Western partners.” The comments came after Switzerland announced that it will host a new round of talks on the ‘Zelensky formula’ this summer. Bern has urged the inclusion of Russia in the talks, unlike during every previous summit, although neither Kiev nor Moscow has agreed.

The Russian government believes the entire process to be a ruse. The Ukrainian document includes points on non- specific issues such as global food and energy security. The ploy, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, is to get non-aligned countries to back these articles so that Kiev could then falsely claim global support for the entire ‘formula’. Russia is prepared for peace talks “based not on a wish list somebody came up with after taking psychotropic substances, but on the realities… on the ground,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview this week. Any stable truce with Ukraine will have to address Russian security concerns caused by NATO’s expansion in Europe, he added. Considering the lack of trust in Moscow after so many Western promises given to it were broken, that bridge would be difficult to cross, according to the Russian leader.

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“..a bad precedent that could push other countries to avoid holding their reserves in Western currencies..”

• EU Members Oppose Plan To Arm Kiev With Russian Money – Politico (RT)

A European Union plan to use the profits generated by Russia’s central bank assets frozen in the bloc to buy weapons for Ukraine has faced resistance from Malta, Luxembourg, and Hungary, Politico reported on Thursday, citing an EU official. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last month suggested using the interest earned from the assets to acquire weapons for Ukraine rather than using the funds for reconstruction, as had been initially planned. According to the outlet, Malta, Luxembourg and Hungary “expressed reservations” about the plan during a meeting of the EU’s 27 ambassadors on Wednesday. The report indicated that von der Leyen’s idea of using Russian money to purchase arms for Kiev has “complicated talks” ahead of the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels next week.

The West has frozen roughly $300 billion in holdings belonging to the Russian central bank since the start of the Ukraine conflict two years ago. Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear holds around €191 billion ($205 billion) of the funds and has accrued nearly €4.4 billion in interest over the past year. The EU is aiming to give Kiev between €2 and €3 billion in revenue generated by the frozen assets this year, the Financial Times reported earlier this week. A first tranche of the money could be disbursed as early as July if Brussels can secure the approval of all bloc members, the outlet said, citing EU officials. Some member states are cautious about the controversial proposal, saying it needs a more thorough analysis, Bloomberg said in a separate report on Tuesday. Hungary has reportedly insisted that the proceeds from the Russian assets should be allocated to Ukraine’s reconstruction rather than be used for funding its military, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the discussions.

While Kiev’s Western backers generally agree that the frozen assets should be used to aid Ukraine, they are at odds about whether an outright seizure would be legal. While the US and UK support the direct expropriation of the funds, some EU member states, France and Germany in particular, warn the move would erode trust in the European financial system. It’s also argued that such a drastic move would set a bad precedent that could push other countries to avoid holding their reserves in Western currencies out of fear that they could someday also becomes targets of sanctions. Moscow has warned that it would respond in kind if the West went through with its threats to confiscate the assets. Russia has repeatedly said that any actions taken against its assets would amount to “theft,” stressing that seizing the funds or any similar move would violate international law and undermine Western currencies, the global financial system, and the world economy.

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“..Everything is written in our Strategy, we haven’t changed it.”

• Kremlin Slams US ‘Distortion’ Of Putin’s Words On Nuclear Weapons (RT)

Washington “deliberately distorted” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s words about the conditions under which Moscow would use nuclear weapons, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. He was referring to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s remarks about an interview Putin gave that aired on Wednesday. While answering a reporter’s question on whether US President Joe Biden had been briefed about Putin’s comments, Jean-Pierre responded that the Russian leader was “restating Russia’s nuclear doctrine” but went on to claim that “Russia’s nuclear rhetoric has been reckless and irresponsible throughout this conflict.” Peskov described the White House’s reaction to Putin’s interview as an “absolutely deliberate distortion of the context,” adding that “no threats to use nuclear weapons were made by Putin in this interview.”

He indicated that the president was answering the journalist’s questions rather than making official statements and explained that Putin “was just talking about the reasons that could make the use of nuclear weapons inevitable.” The Kremlin spokesperson also drew attention to the fact that Jean-Pierre had omitted the president’s remark where he stressed that “it has never come into his mind to use tactical nuclear weapons” despite the “various situations” that had emerged on the battlefield. While answering a question about tactical nuclear arms in the interview, Putin stressed that weapons of mass destruction have never been used by Russia in Ukraine. “Weapons exist to be used. We have our own principles and they imply that we are ready to use any weapons, including the ones you mentioned, if we are talking about the existence of the Russian state, in case of a threat to our sovereignty and independence. Everything is written in our Strategy, we haven’t changed it.”

In June 2020, Putin signed a decree on Russia’s nuclear deterrence policy. The document provides for the use of nuclear weapons in a number of cases, one of which is aggression against Russia using conventional weapons that puts the existence of the state at risk. Putin warned that Russia is prepared to use nuclear weapons and considers its arsenal “more advanced than anyone else’s.” Meanwhile, the Russian leader suggested that Washington has enough experts in strategic deterrence, including President Joe Biden himself, to avoid a nuclear conflagration. But he added that if the US abandons its de facto moratorium on nuclear tests, Moscow will do the same.

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What a strange thing to say. Does he know something?

• Trump Unlikely To Win – Macron (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed doubt that Donald Trump will be able to secure another term in the White House, when asked who could potentially mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Macron called Moscow “an adversary,” but stopped short of declaring it an “enemy,” during an interview with the France 2 and TF1 TV channels on Thursday. He once again refused to rule out NATO deployments in Ukraine, reiterating that Paris is ready to make any “decisions necessary to prevent Russia’s victory” – and noting that he sees no opportunities for negotiations with the Kremlin at this point. “I am absolutely ready for discussions at any time, but we need someone sincere and peace-oriented to do that,” Macron said, adding that he hoped that the time would come one day to negotiate with a Russian president “whoever it might be.”

Noting Macron’s reluctance to engage in direct communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the interviewers wondered if the United States could potentially mediate such talks, especially if Donald Trump is reelected. “As far as I’m informed, I don’t think Donald Trump will become President of the United States,” the French leader claimed. At the same time Macron said there was “nothing personal” behind his decision to refrain from dialogue with Putin. “Undoubtedly, I am the head of the state that used to talk to him more than anyone else.”

Back in January, Macron said he would deal with whoever wins the US election, claiming “I’ve always had the same philosophy, I take the leaders that people give me.” US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set for a rematch in November, with recent polls showing Trump leading his incumbent rival by between two and nine percentage points. Trump has promised to end the Ukrainian conflict “in 24 hours” if voted back into office, without specifying how peace could be achieved. Meanwhile, Russia is holding its own presidential election this weekend, in which Vladimir Putin faces three opponents.

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“Let us understand that this is a propaganda bubble that Americans have, to a large part, inflicted on themselves.”

• US in ‘Constant State of Neo-McCarthyism’ – Sleboda (Sp.)

The US fearmongering surrounding Russia is the result of a sort of “Neo-McCarthyism” Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Wednesday. “If someone threatened the existence of the US state, they would use nuclear weapons. Putin is saying the exact same thing,” Sleboda explained. “The Western media just loves putting Russia and nukes together in the same sentence. I think it has a certain amount of scaremongering, a kind of neo-McCarthyite effect just by seeing the two words together in a headline.” Show host Melik Abdul pointed to a panel between US commentators Candace Owens and Chris Cuomo, during which Cuomo refused to acknowledge that Putin is intelligent, Abdul said that it is emblematic of the West’s refusal to “acknowledge basic stuff.”

“I mean, could we agree that Putin is intelligent?” Sleboda responded playfully. “Could we agree that Putin is a human being? [Do] we agree that Putin’s first name is Vladimir? None of these things, I guess, [can] be agreed on because we live in a constant state of hyper neo-McCarthyism,” Sleboda added, noting that the term isn’t quite correct since Russia is no longer communist. “Maybe Russophobic hysteria” is a better term, he pondered. “But Vladimir Putin is, obviously, an extremely intelligent and capable leader of his country. He is a thorn in the US hegemony’s side. Numerous US politicians and officials have admitted that, but in the current social-political climate in the United States, it’s simply verboten. It is forbidden to acknowledge things like that,” Sleboda explained. “Let us understand that this is a propaganda bubble that Americans have, to a large part, inflicted on themselves.”

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“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery..”

• The U.S. Is Not a Democracy and Can’t Be Reformed (Barton)

It may be reasonable to start with the Trump administration (2016-2020), especially with the view that he is likely to stage a comeback in the forthcoming presidential elections in November. How close was he to corporations and the very rich and to what extent did he represent their will? As noted by Eric Lipton in the New York Times, during Trump’s presidency (2016-2020) there was “the merging of private business interest with government affairs”. So, for instance, billionaire investor Carl Icahn was appointed as a special adviser to the president. Interestingly, as he was not an official government employee he therefore was not subject to conflict of interest divestment requirements. Consequently, Icahn maintained his majority holdings in an oil refinery while advocating for a rule change that would have saved his refinery more than $200 million the previous year.

Let’s take a shortcut and indicate how plutocratic Trump’s government was. Trump’s cabinet had more combined personal wealth than one-third of American households, and Icahn was richer than all of them combined. As Liz Kennedy from the Center for American Progress points out, corporate interests are in a position to outspend labor or public interest groups on elections. For example, in 2014, business interests spent $1.1 billion on state candidates and committees compared with the $215 million that labor groups spent. Unfortunately, the U.S. establishment, facing such huge volumes of money in politics that give lobbyists far greater access to legislators than should be allowed in liberal democracies, does nothing about the problem. How about the much-vaunted concept of “checks and balances”? The system was designed in theory to allow each branch of a government to amend or veto acts of another branch to prevent any one branch from having too much power.

But the money issue was already addressed by the Supreme Court. In its decisions like Buckley versus Valeo and Citizens United versus FEC, the Supreme Court stated that political donations and spending on lobbying were a form of free speech and therefore constitutionally protected. What a clever way of giving too much power to the very rich! In practice, one can hardly see any checks and balances. Hardly any high-ranking politician commented on the impact of the above Supreme Court decisions. One of the exceptions was the ex-president, Jimmy Carter. In 2015, he was asked on a radio show, the Thom Hartmann Program, what he thought about the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns.

President Carter elaborated as follows: “It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and Congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over… At present, the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.”

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“..basically just ‘CNN, but on social media,’ which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.”

• Musk Cancels X Partnership Deal With Don Lemon (RT)

Elon Musk has abruptly withdrawn from a deal to exclusively host journalist Don Lemon’s new talk show on X (formerly Twitter), shortly after he interviewed the billionaire last Friday, the former CNN anchor has said. In a statement on Wednesday, Lemon explained that the deal was part of X’s public commitment to “amplifying more diverse voices on their platform” and that Musk had encouraged him to join X with a new talk show and promised to support the project. However, several hours after filming an interview with Musk on Friday, which Lemon described as a “good conversation,” the billionaire allegedly messaged the former host, informing him that the partnership contract with the Don Lemon Show had been terminated without explaining the reasons.

“His commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me,” Lemon suggested, adding that there were no restrictions on the interview that Musk had agreed to, and insisted that his questions were “respectful and wide ranging.” Musk has since confirmed the deal was scuttled, but pointed out that Lemon would still be free to upload his show, monetize it, and build his viewership on the platform “along with everyone else.” “What we aren’t going to do is guarantee minimum payments to him, as he was demanding, which would be going beyond everyone else,” Musk explained. As for the reason for the sudden termination, the billionaire stated that Lemon’s approach to the interview was “basically just ‘CNN, but on social media,’ which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.”

“Instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity,” Musk wrote, referring to the former president of the media company where Lemon worked until last year. In several snippets of the interview that have been published ahead of the full premiere on Monday, Lemon asked the billionaire a series of questions about content moderation, hate speech, conspiracy theories, as well as his political leanings and attitude towards former US President Donald Trump. The visibly frustrated Musk stated at one point in the interview that “he doesn’t have to answer these questions” and told Lemon that “the only reason I’m doing this interview is because you’re on the X platform and you asked for it.” “Otherwise I would not be doing this interview,” Musk said.

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“There is also a chilling option for house arrest if a judge believes a defendant “will commit” an offense..”

• Canada Moves to Impose Potential Life Imprisonment for Speech Crimes (Turley)

We have previously discussed the unrelenting attacks by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his allies on free speech. There has been a steady criminalization of speech, including even jokes and religious speech, in Canada. Now, the Canadian parliament is moving toward a new change that would allow the imposition of life imprisonment on those who post views deemed supportive of genocide. With a growing movement calling Israel’s war in Gaza “genocide,” the potential scope of such a law is readily apparent. That appears to be its very draw for anti-free speech advocates in the country.

The Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63 increases the potential penalties from five years to life imprisonment. It also increases the penalty for the willful promotion of hatred (a dangerously ill-defined crime) from two years to five years. The proposed changes constitute a doubling down on Canada’s commitment to reducing free speech for citizens despite criticism from many in the civil liberties community. There is also a chilling option for house arrest if a judge believes a defendant “will commit” an offense. In other words, if a judge thinks that a citizen will be undeterred and try to speak freely again. Justice Minister Arif Virani employed the same hysteria to convince citizens to surrender their freedoms to the government. He expressed how terrified he was with the potential of free speech, stating that he is “terrified of the dangers that lurk on the internet for our children.”

It is not likely to end there. Today the rationale is genocide. However, once the new penalties are in place, a host of other groups will demand similar treatment for those with opposing views on their own causes. This law already increased the penalties for anything deemed hateful speech. The law comes after Canada blocked a Russian dissident from becoming a citizen because of her violation of Russian anti-free speech laws. In a telling act, the government said that the same conduct (i.e., free speech) could be a crime in Canada. Indeed, it may now be punished even more harshly.

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It ain’t over.

• 973% SURGE in Heart Failure Among Navy Pilots (DW)

A United States Navy medic who blew the whistle on an explosive report showing a massive increase in heart issues among military pilots has been blocked by the Department of Defense (DOD) from accessing his work computer. Navy Medical Service Corps Lt. Ted Macie shared shocking information about the surge in heart failure among military personnel. Macie claimed that members of the U.S. military have experienced massive increases in heart-related issues, presenting Defense Department data showing the following:
937% increase in heart failure
152% increase in cardiomyopathy
69% increase in ischemic heart disease
36% increase in hypertensive disease
63% increase in other forms of heart disease

The alarming data was first raised by his wife, Mara Macie, a candidate for Florida’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House against John Rutherford. “The responses to our concerns from the DoD have been memorandums, letters. As in a letter displaying how they confirmed the data but said it was due to the COVID-19 virus, even though all the issues start in 2021,” Lt. Macie told The Gateway Pundit last week. “I met with the Chief of Naval Operations and her aide. So far the only response to that is that the DMED data has been sent to the Navy IG from the CNO’s office. Slow rolling everything has been the norm as well as denying anything is happening.” Just days later, Mara Macie revealed that Lt. Ted Macie had lost access to his work computer. “This afternoon, as Ted was nearing the end of his work day, he went to use the restroom. And when he returned, he no longer had access to his work computer, and he needs to have access to his work computer to do his job,” Mara said. Mara Macie said the commanding officer ordered Lt. Macie’s access to his work computer to be blocked.

“I haven’t yet, and I believe that’s because I’m putting out the DoD’s own data. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not my job to look at the defense database. However, it’s something that is affecting our entire DoD. So, I think it’s kind to point this out…” said Lt. Macie on Wednesday. Last year, Macie’s wife blasted the U.S. government’s treatment of military troops during the COVID-19 pandemic. “So you may have seen my wife’s recent post, and I want to elaborate on that and give you an example as to why reinstatement, back pay, and apologies isn’t enough,” Macie said in his video. According to information published by the U.S. Army, 97% of active-duty U.S. troops are fully vaccinated, 90% of Army National Guard members are fully vaccinated, and 91% of U.S. Army Reserve members are fully vaccinated.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Tucker Kory
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768063269808361671
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768056633123385656

 

 

8 minute house

 

 

Heavens on earth

 

 

Egg

 

 

Tiger

 

 

Grounding your garden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768002498248290739

 

 

Tom&Jerry
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768392683318624400

 

 

Starling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1768184803063394413

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home › Forums › Debt Rattle March 15 2024

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  • March 15, 2024 at 9:16 am #154698
    Raúl Ilargi Meijer
    Keymaster

    Vincent van Gogh Lilac Bush 1889   • US Has Created ‘Frankenstein’ States – Galloway (RT) • NATO’s ‘Welfare’ States: Treating the U.S. As ‘Room S
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 15 2024]

    March 15, 2024 at 11:55 am #154699
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Republican Impeachment Investigators Subpoena 13 Years Of Hunter Biden’s Phone Records

    So after years, they finally even LOOK for evidence? Muchly Wow.

    “Toronto Police Gives Advice On Auto-Theft: Just ‘Leave Your Keys Out’

    Bacon-eating surrender monkeys. Thanks Trudy! And the criminals are all fine upstanding men from Edmonton I presume?

    “UnitedHealth CEO Meets White House Officials After ‘Biggest Cyber Attack On US Health Care System’

    But we have a solution: More computers! More internet! More Updates!!!! Who doesn’t love updates, amirite?

    Oh, btw, Cell companies have been update-busy-busy lately, as TMobile seems to want to fine for giving you the SHAFT. Shaft! Chicki-chicki-bow-wow! Sex, Hate, Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco. And $1,000 fine for not SELLING Pot, but TALKING about pot….even if it’s legal in your state and jurisdiction. Tmobile don’t care! More money for me!

    What is “Hate” as we ask about hourly now? Hate is an INTERNAL, Emotional state, undetectable by others. It’s the Fee-Fees. If you have the WRONG fee-fees, as detected by by PutinTelepathy, we get $1,000!!!. I can Detect this all day!!!

    Hey, what was that in Civil Rights about “Equal access” that you couldn’t cut somebody’s phone service because they were Black. Or a Civil Rights agitator, protester? Um, yeah. Ah, Fascism! Is there anything you can’t fix?

    Biden’s speech, the idea of building Israel a brand-new pier for free was Nutsy’s, not Biden’s. No doubt! Use it to deport all the sub-humans, Use it to get offshore and steal all their oil, but most importantly, use it to DELAY the moron Americans who are applying pressure to Human Rights, keep them busy for another two months, while we genocide the REST of the Warsaw Ghetto…I mean Gaza. Let’s Go Brandon! Who’s down for a Genocide? I’m down for a Genocide. If you want a genocide, put your hands in the air for Blue!

    “Occupied Territory” Actually, we know Israel isn’t the 51st state: if they were, they’d only have TWO Senators.

    Galloway. Galloway is a Core Socialist and I would vote for him. That’s also true in England. Being Galloway, he said one minute later he is running 100 candidates at every level with the Party he just made up. So again: Prime Minister Galloway. That’s why the UK Uniparty is choking. I mean, can anyone even TELL the difference between their candidates? Like Romney and Kerry? Blair and Cameron? Who can tell the difference? Policies never change.

    “Germany, by far the richest NATO member behind the United States, allocates just 1.57% of its GDP”

    More than that. So you’re down 20%. Great. 20% down EVERY YEAR FOR 30 YEARS. So, methinks to get to your top, you have to back-fill all that, right? So you need to spend 15% GDP this year? Not just Germany, but everyone besides Greece and Poland. Again, essentially a country equal to the United States. What is that backlog? Two Trillion dollars? Huh. Adds up doesn’t it?

    “• US Intelligence ‘Threat Assessment’ Says Hamas Isn’t Going Away (Antiwar)

    Pointing out that, no surprise, the casualty numbers in Gaza are made up and much inflated. So we’re creating a new Holocaust Myth. Can we not do that this time but tell the truth? It’s not like it isn’t happening. The Israeli numbers are minimized and not admitted. And everyone’s leaving, as they have dual passports. Economy is failing. “Built a desert and call it Peace”. Nice victory you have there.

    But saying, look, we can’t know what’s going on, but I can tell it’s a lie. Probably Hamas is being attrition’d bad. A lot of the deaths aren’t women, but these guys, laid out in sheets so you can’t tell. Why would they admit to Nutso how many soldiers remain? But we don’t have to eat the cow s—t they’re shoveling either.

    ““The office of the president is under British control, while the military, who supposedly will gather in the name of Zaluzhny, are under Americans,”

    That is, the ANGLOS. This is the UK ANGLO war against Russia, the 3rd (or 4th, or 5th) Crimean war.

    ““..we are ready to use the means to achieve our objective – which is that Russia does not win..”

    Why? What does that have to do with Marseilles? France doesn’t believe him either.

    “A “reasonable” peace agreement with Ukraine would involve Moscow taking full control over the country,”

    Putin said similar. He said he’s a dim view of any negotiations, but is still open if somebody can come up with something. Proof of life, I suppose. And that means in essence? The war continues until Russia has everything it wants, then dictates terms of total surrender. Oh well. That’s what happens when “You lose” because “you couldn’t be arsed to have an army”.

    “Macron called Moscow “an adversary,” but stopped short of declaring it an “enemy,”

    What is wrong with these people? Roget’s Thesaurus would have them as possible synonyms. So your words are going to protect you? How did that work out the LAST time you were stuffed in a locker?

    Then in this zone, Macron said he wants no Red Lines, so Medvedev said, “Well, I guess we should have no Red Lines, either, right?” Concerning nuking France? This is baffling to the West. How DARE you???

    From Luongo, watch the tend here. At the beginning, all Europe ESPECIALLY Macron, were like “No, we must work together, find solutions, and end the war.” That is to say, it’s all the United States! Those bad Yankees, but what can ya do? With Macron at the head of the moderate, negotiate-Russia wing. Germany also reluctant. As the U.S. departs, each step of the way Lo! We discover that all EUROPE wants the war and is panicked the U.S. won’t. And worse, won’t pay for it. More than offsetting us. Macron again at the head of it, from biggest peace negotiator, to now the Napoleonic Novorussia Nuker. Huh. Well ain’t that a kick in the pants? So what I’m reading is, you WANT this war, but don’t want to PAY for it, and want to BLAME everybody else for it while you hide and drink Champs. So I guess this means You’re Socialists. Everything is somebody else’s fault. Everybody else has to pay. That’s Sharing! Meanwhile YOU expect to be the very special insider Party Members shopping in Zurich and running everything while everyone else lacks Jam.

    Yeah. We know. But we called you this time, so: Good Luck with that.

    What’s so shocking to me is the level to which they refuse to open a SINGLE factory. Like even if I wasn’t attacking Russia in six years (they are), I’d AT LEAST open 1-5 shell factories, right? Just for daily business and safety’s sake. NOPE. France finds out they have no men, no jets, no preparedness. You’d just book back to the normal baseline of military readiness, right? Not if you’re England you don’t! They have no carriers, no jets, and no military budget this year.

    And it’s not like this is political. Just STOP the stealing by somebody – Israel perhaps – and do your graft via Dassault and GIAT instead of Kiev for a while. Get Peugeot some new machine tools and rail lines. Subsidy ArcelorMittal for some fat kickbacks. No, no, and no. WTF. Do they know something I don’t know? Why would you do that?

    Well, one thing’s for sure: they ain’t having a war. So that’s a good thing. They don’t even know how to make bows and arrows; were they planning on texting them to death?

    “• The U.S. Is Not a Democracy and Can’t Be Reformed (Barton)

    Thank God it’s not a Democracy and was never meant to be one. We can see that Jacobean streak run amok here:

    Normal people (okay, women, but…) are terrified to say basic things. Like “Gender exists”. Okay, for fun here HOW CAN YOU BE TRANS IF GENDER DOESN’T EXIST? But whether you say yes or no, Robespierre and “The Council for Public Safety” will chop your head off. And in this environment, you want a Democracy? Where 51% can vote for your public dismemberment without trial? Pass.

    And we CAN be reformed. What does that even mean? So 400 years from now, it’s 2424, and the U.S. is what? Just as corrupt as ever? Or MORE corrupt on a trendline to the center of the universe? A: Neither, of course, just as King Louis didn’t last forever, Charlemagne didn’t last forever, Napoleon didn’t last forever, also Robespierre didn’t last forever. They’re on the Fifth REPUBLIC, after the many monarchies. It CHANGED. The nation got more corrupt…

    BUT ALSO LESS CORRUPT

    …In a normal, almost predictable, cycle of time. And so with us. So clearly we can be “reformed”. The question is, what will it take? and what will it look like after? You want to throw out the American Experiment already? Geez, you’re worse than the Enemy!

    If you mean we keep the same people, same processes, same laws, same “norms”, same incentives, and same moral standards then of course no. You’re saying the machine changes by not changing anything, and that’s stupid. Try to be productive: what do you WANT it to look like? Because it’s not working now, half the country wants to burn it all down anyway, so there’ll be plenty of space, like it or not, to establish your ideas.

    My take from the article? If government can’t regulate the economy (which they have no Constitutional mandate for) and can’t interfere to make winners or losers, then why would the wealthy bribe and buy them? Go ahead and “merge” I guess, since it won’t have any effect anyway with that radical centralization, overreach, and granular regulation of individual men such as now, with Musk and Trump, and specific, named companies like TikTok. That’s actually illegal by the way. We’ve now done it for some 150 years since Lincoln’s centralization, and his murder so they could keep the oligarchic power grab in place, as per Grant’s Presidency. It’s considered normal, as is granting any “Corporate” license anyone wants, when they used to be special case, so that people would be the creators, subject to laws and death. Why are there billionaires and what would we do with them? Competition will chop them up like piranhas in no time. Government regulation is the only reason they exist in the first place. Name me the top 100 and their industries. Banking. Insurance. Telco. Weapons. Not wheat. Not light bulbs.

    “a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves”

    What favors? The government isn’t supposed to be controlling most of that in the first place. Again, the point of regulation is not AGAINST companies, companies pay millions, billions, to CAUSE regulation. And outlaw all my enemies. It’s RoR like 10x more profitable than doing work.

    ““His commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me,” Lemon suggested,”

    I agree, WTF? But I don’t know the details. Apparently Lemon thought he could roast Musk, on his own platform, with his own promo money? That’s just being a dick. Lemon can still talk like a normal user, right? So…

    “• Canada Moves to Impose Potential Life Imprisonment for Speech Crimes (Turley)

    Tell me if I’m right here, but all Canada looks each day to the Calendar, to see if Moosilini is still Dictator-for-Life like his father was. What am I saying? Canada STARTED the trucker protest. And although here we changed from “Showing up” to “Not showing up” (NYC) because they’ll arrest and kill everyone here, Canada is on the forefront of about Dun Had It. So don’t be surprised if, like the Trucker Protest, one day in June everyone in Canada just decides Justin Castro isn’t PM and they don’t take orders from him anymore. Let him stomp his tiny, black-painted feet. We’ll just throw rocks at him.

    True? I feel like we’re reaching that level and places like Ottawa and Alberta are at the leading edge.

    AFKTT: Where you been? I thought you were dead! Consciousness of Sheep is sharp, but also British so he seems to miss the hundreds of 50-year contracts for new oil pipelines being signed worldwide. Yeah, BRITAIN is out of oil. But not Russia, Sudan, Iran, Alaska, Venezuela, Brazil… Don’t project your stuff on me! We haven’t even drilled the East and West coasts, and the West Coast at Malibu has so much oil it’s pouring up on the beaches. But why burn ours when we have yours?

    March 15, 2024 at 12:51 pm #154700
    Dr. D
    Participant

    One

    Two

    March 15, 2024 at 1:26 pm #154701
    zerosum
    Participant

    Forecasting the future.
    Pick the first domino.
    The cascading critical infrastructure//social/economic collapse/change

    energy – nuclear, gas and oil, electricity, renewable

    Complexity – hate, fear, lies, pride, hysteria, education/knowledge, politics, intimidation, racism, motivation/quiet quitting, transformation to green/sustainable society, war, peace, scam/stealing, bribery, corruption,

    Growth – immigration, depopulation, genocide, weakened immunity, failure of health system,
    failure of pensions, food shortages/insecurity, failure of supply line,

    March 15, 2024 at 2:57 pm #154726
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Elon in Berlin

    I believe that the quality of the relationship a parent has with their own children says a great deal about the person. Elon has been appearing in public often with a child in tow. The question in my mind: is the child there because Elon longs to bond with the child, and is looking for opportunities to be with his kids, or for optics? Following behind Elon is a dark-haired woman, who expected him to hand the child to her so that she could put the child in the car seat. He did not, instead setting his child in the car seat himself. Then he moved away, answering the question, and the woman leaned into the car to fasten the child’s seat buckles. He handled the child with ease, without seeming aware that others might be analyzing his interaction with the child.

    March 15, 2024 at 2:58 pm #154727
    zerosum
    Participant

    Voting in a dictatorship
    It’s not Ukraine. It’s in Russia

    https://tass.com/politics/1759867
    15 MAR, 01:48
    Over 1,200 polling stations operating in 3 of Russia’s new regions for presidential vote
    Voting at 581 polling stations is taking place in the LPR, while over 60 polling stations are operating across the Kherson Region
    © Alexander Reka/TASS
    MOSCOW, March 15. /TASS/. Voting in the Russian presidential election started in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and the Kherson Region as more than 1,200 polling stations opened in the three new regions, local election commissions told TASS.

    “Our goal is to prevent concentrations of large numbers of voters in a specific place at a specific time,” DPR Election Commission Chairman Vladimir Vysotsky said.

    DPR voters will be able to cast their ballots until 8:00 p.m. Moscow time (5:00 p.m. GMT – TASS) on Friday and Saturday, and 626 polling stations will be open until 3:00 p.m. Moscow time (12:00 p.m. GMT) on Sunday, the DPR election commission specified.

    Voting at 581 polling stations is taking place in the LPR, while over 60 polling stations are operating across the Kherson Region. Voter turnout in early voting stood at 18.52%, LPR Election Commission Chairwoman Yelena Kravchenko told reporters.

    Zaporozhye Region residents will go to the polls on March 17 only, the local election commission said. Meanwhile, early voting started in Melitopol, Energodar, Berdyansk and other cities and district centers in that region on Friday.

    The Russian Federation Council, or upper house of parliament, officially designated March 17, 2024 as the date of the presidential election. The Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) then announced that voting will take place over three days on March 15-17. Four candidates are vying for the top office, namely New People party nominee Vladislav Davankov; self-nominated candidate and incumbent President Vladimir Putin; Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) nominee Leonid Slutsky; and Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) nominee Nikolay Kharitonov.

    March 15, 2024 at 3:00 pm #154728
    jb-hb
    Participant

    Thinking on the attempts to reform myself from half a lifetime of postmodernist leftism, here’s what I came up with since I last mentioned it.

    The wokeists – be they environmental, sexual, etc – have the same thing going on I detect in myself when I try to trace my internal line between logos and antilogos.

    A desire to change things for free, yes. Desire for greatness without the work to reach greatness, yes – grandiosity. It should be different. Make things magically different. Against reality, against logos.

    But ALSO a desire for stasis, to NOT change. I should not have to adjust to, take account of xyz thing. I should not have to change my expectations, my behavior, my conception of reality. Don’t tell me I cannot have it all.

    We see this come out in the current year astroturf marxist environmental movement – on the one hand, a concept of some perfect thing being sullied by humans (Marx came to replace religion, not to do away with it) going back as far as there are hominids, the holy should not touch the profane, gotcha.

    But the other ingredient is the desire for stasis. Nothing must change! The idea that somehow the climate is teetering on the edge of catastrophe if even a miniscule 0.00005% change occurs.

    Is that not reflected internally, a PERSONAL expression of antilogos?

    Do we not, in our worse moments, shy away from having to sacrifice, having to CHANGE even a little bit, feeling as though it would be like death? WHILE wishing for free impossible stuff? A reason you find “atheist materialist” leftist who are neither atheist nor materialist mucking around in tarot, wicca, manifestation, and so on. Trying to cast spells with language, with rituals.

    So those companion aspects of antilogos – the wish for fever-dream malleability of reality and the desire for stasis.

    These things are always better understood by humans through story and imagery. The test of Galadriel – offered The Ring. Able to ACTUALLY bring the things she would want to keep the same into stasis, not having to go to the Grey Havens and from thence across the sea, to not see the Elves fade out of Middle Earth. Power to dominate, rule, do anything, adored and worshipped, perfect grandiosity. But she manages to not take the ring.

    “I pass the test! I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

    March 15, 2024 at 3:24 pm #154729
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Egg in vinegar

    Every once in a while, a hen will lay an egg without a shell.

    March 15, 2024 at 3:33 pm #154730
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    WEF Insider Reveals The ‘New 9/11’ Will Be a ‘Global Famine’

    https://rumble. com/v4ikcuw-wef-insider-reveals-the-new-911-will-be-a-global-famine.html

    March 15, 2024 at 4:06 pm #154731
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Oh Canazida, oh Canzida

    You are slipping beneath the waves without a First Amendment.

    Then again you are where all the traitors to the American Revolution and it’s ideal of free speech fled to after the Patriots in every city, town and village threaten with lynching if you reminded loyal to the Crown.

    They all slunk away to Canazida rather than stand up to the British tyrant.

    Going full Orwell is kinda a pitiful lack of courage and values.

    Once again look at your Fuhrer, figures doesn’t it?

    .

    March 15, 2024 at 4:20 pm #154732
    Dr. D
    Participant

    JB — Ah, but that’s where the third magic comes in: It’s somebody else’s responsibility. It’s somebody else’s fault. They’re supposed to work and figure it all out — those Experts — so I don’t have to.

    The life of the eternal child.

    And who isn’t, really? But leaning into it is leaning into Vice, and pushing against it is aspiring to “Virtue”, that is “Vir”, strength, ability, efficacy. We all do it all day long and choose.

    March 15, 2024 at 4:54 pm #154733
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    re: cultural revolution

    Anecdote: Someone I know raised 2 kids to adulthood, and they’re rocketing off to better things. They’re twins. One son, one daughter. The daughter succumbed to the pressure, is a ‘person of alternate lifestyle’ in the most inoffensive way possible. The son has flatly rejected the programming, dropped out of colege, grown a manly beard, found a pike-smart hippie chick…damnest thin I ever saw! 🙂

    —————————————————————–


    @jb-hb    : Remember (if you know, express it) that those ‘failings’ are not light-switch. I feel exactly those, but to different degrees. For instance, I am not ambitious, do not desire greatness. Recognition, of course! I can accept much change, in fact seek some just to see it, but I’m brittle in many areas, moreso with age.

    Thanks for Vinge rec. Read that (Zones of Thought Trilogy) years ago, and will second the rec. He can be as info-dense as Heinlein, really a treat!

    I note that many recent actions look to me like attempt to set up Peace Authority (Peace War, Marooned). Anyone not in the club gets busted down to 100-watt-per-day lifestyle.

    Relevant to cultural rev – I kinda lost interest in Benford and Vinge when they wrote some very ‘cardboard’ lesbians. No one, especially not lesbians, should forgive them for that. It seemed odd timing, and forced.

    —————————————————————–

    Uncle Jack – Dewa Budjana

    March 15, 2024 at 6:06 pm #154734
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “Do we not, in our worse moments, shy away from having to sacrifice, having to CHANGE even a little bit, feeling as though it would be like death? WHILE wishing for free impossible stuff? A reason you find “atheist materialist” leftist who are neither atheist nor materialist mucking around in tarot, wicca, manifestation, and so on. Trying to cast spells with language, with rituals.”

    AKA the path of the black magician. Seeking power for the little me, the ego. Looking for a shortcut, a way around the difficult path.

    “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”

    What is the cure then?

    Love – putting the happiness and welfare of others above oneself.

    Manhood

    March 15, 2024 at 6:14 pm #154735
    John Day
    Participant

    Is Rothschild-Bank water-boy Macron being given test lines to say because he is disposable now?
    (Asking for a friend.)

    March 15, 2024 at 6:17 pm #154736
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    “These things are always better understood by humans through story and imagery. The test of Galadriel – offered The Ring. Able to ACTUALLY bring the things she would want to keep the same into stasis, not having to go to the Grey Havens and from thence across the sea, to not see the Elves fade out of Middle Earth. Power to dominate, rule, do anything, adored and worshipped, perfect grandiosity. But she manages to not take the ring.”

    This motif was also expressed when Harry Potter broke the Elder Wand after defeating Voldemort. He rejected the path of power represented by the Elder Wand for the path of love – being content to accept his small role in the world as a father and husband.

    Thank you jb-hb (and many others) for the quality of content you bring to this site.

    March 15, 2024 at 6:35 pm #154737
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Oh Canazida: Parliament Moves To Impose Potential Life Imprisonment For Speech Crimes

    “There has been a steady criminalization of speech, including even jokes and religious speech, in Canada….”

    Canazida is beyond Hope because they have no moral compass at this stage in History.

    .

    No shame

    Yaroslav Hunka

    .

    March 15, 2024 at 6:59 pm #154738
    John Day
    Participant

    Thanks everybody who is rejecting the path of power, and embracing the path of compassionate personal responsibility today.
    Thanks for noting the humanity of Elon Musk, Phoenixvoice.
    Carry-on compadres & comadres.
    😉

    March 15, 2024 at 7:02 pm #154739
    jb-hb
    Participant

    I like that, an unholy trinity

    –fever-dream reality-malleability wishful thinking

    –a cringing desire for stasis

    –big daddy/experts complex (Follow the Big Daddy!!! / Big Daddy Failed Me!!!)

    Three – until I figure out or am given another one. I am finding it way easier to identify and articulate evil in examination of myself than some sort of principled, top-to-bottom integrated good.

    And i agree it does have that Dark Path/Satanist feeling to it. Thus nice atheist liberals like Naomi Wolfe throwing up their hands and saying ok it is demonic. An atheist should and a true atheist does go with best-for-right-now tools. Else no integrity. Acceptable language placeholder.

    But wouldn’t I like death – nay, material reality – defeated ala Micheal Moorcock’s An Alien Heat? (a silly but interesting book, not his best, but he was really stretching to write post tech singularity which is the most difficult scifi) But then the problem with “demonic” temptation is, it never brings the goods AND NEVER INTENDED TO. (damn capitalism, it DOES sort of bring the goods to the working class and that is BAD… thanks Engels, surely you are the working man’s ally and best friend, not at all a shyster…)

    Like if nanites could tear your body apart and rebuild it as actually the opposite sex, that would be something. Maybe there’s some argument for a crash project like the moon landing purely on the basis of all the spinoff benefits – if we could do that, what couldn’t we do? But no, it’s give yourself to the idea of it, give us your allegiance and unswerving obedience, and go through motions that AREN’T achievement of that thing. And nah, we will make no effort to give you the real thing. After all, we’ve already got you,

    Internal acceptance, internalization of the temptation was the only point, I suppose. Jesus saying if you did it in thought you did it in action has offended me for many years The man who contained himself to fantasy and never harmed a fly vs the serial killer who acted out his fantasies. Surely one was a noble, perhaps hard-fought self containment. And yet.

    Ah yeah, Harry Potter also! Also Neo, in the first Matrix movie, has a terminal case of GenX Stoicism. Is saying no I am not the one practically before anyone can finish telling him they think he might be. Pre-emtive Galadrialitis. He’s The One because he won’t say he is when it’s time to save Morpheus. He just knows what he needs to try to do.

    I think people sometimes want Jordan Peterson to be The Big Daddy, fix everything, perfectly handle everything, but he’s just some dude who grew up reading scifi in a small town, became a teacher and clinical psychologist, and found himself at the crux of a civilizational crisis, in a sense. The one guy with a certain level of exposure giving basic obvious advice in a fever dream world of bs. What would have been totally uncontroversial a decade before. Picking up the weight he could and trying to carry it. While screwing up – like with his statement about Kavenaugh.

    Anyway thanks to those who have indulged my posts on this vague topic. I’d say it was off topic except it touches on.. SOMETHING guiding current events. And at the end of the day or a life, how to face those events. “The ‘New 9/11’ Will Be a ‘Global Famine’” here we go again.

    March 15, 2024 at 9:09 pm #154740
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    If you will indulge me just one more movie reference, which I believe puts a nice bow on the theme started by jb-hb:

    In the movie Thor (2011), Thor steps up to receive rulership over the Nine Realms, currently held by his father, Odin. But sadly, Odin sees that he is not ready to receive such power, since Thor is inflated with pride, vanity, and entitlement. He is also drunk on victory, as a result of the power of his hammer, Mjölnir (a symbol of force). Thor is still in the thralls of the childhood ego.

    Odin, older and wiser, portrayed by Anthony Hopkins (no other actor could do the role justice), not only denies Thor the throne, but strips him of his current powers and casts him down to Earth.

    Odin Takes Thor’s Power

    Thor must learn to accept his new fate and take responsibility for it. Through suffering and torment his pride, vanity, and entitlement are reduced to ashes. He learns to love and care for others, eventually laying down his own life to save those around him. (His ordeals have transformed him – the difficult path is needed by most to purge the dominance of the childhood ego.)

    At this climax of self-sacrifice, Odin steps in to restore Thor’s previous powers now that he is truly ready and worthy to rule the Nine Realms.

    March 15, 2024 at 10:23 pm #154742
    John Day
    Participant

    Steampunk Reveries https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/steampunk-reveries

    Thanks AFKTT. A Fatally Repeated Misunderstanding , Consciousness of Sheep (What if there was never any oil?)
    In 1927, the market price of coal spiked. As is the way with events like this, a scapegoat was easily found. Welsh coal miners had been on strike for most of the previous year, helping to create a global shortage. There was though, a deeper and potentially existential cause – the peak of coal-based coal production.
    ​ Although oil was rapidly replacing coal as the primary energy source in the USA, the rest of the world’s economies were as dependent upon coal as they had been half-a-century before. And even America was reliant enough on coal for the price spike to translate into an economic slowdown… which was a serious problem in an economy which had been experiencing the debt-based “roaring twenties,” during which almost everyone came to believe that the economy could only grow, and that tomorrow was bound to be better than today.
    ​ Economic historians remind us in lurid detail what happened next. As the economy slowed, the value of assets fell short of expectations. Millions of people who had borrowed to invest suddenly found themselves with assets which were worth less than the debt they needed to repay. For a while they stuck it out, hoping that growth would return, and values would be restored. Until, in October 1929, the big players began to cut their losses. The Wall Street Crash turned paper millionaires into paupers overnight and paved the way for the Great Depression which saw millions of Americans – and later, millions around the world – reduced to penury.
    ​ The road out of depression was far worse, involving global industrial warfare which decimated cities and economies, leaving more than 80 million corpses in its wake… but the US arms industry had a good war. And sadly, among the wealthy and the powerful, the erroneous conclusion that “war is good” was easily drawn.
    ​ Behind the awakening of the sleeping giant that was the industrial USA, though, lay oil. Without the oil to power the tanks and aeroplanes and ships and trucks, the allies could not have prevailed. Indeed, it is a measure of the power of oil that the USA was able to simultaneously fight four campaigns – Central Pacific, Southwest Pacific, North Africa-Italy, and Northwest Europe – against three enemies – Japan, Italy, and Germany – while having sufficient excess industrial capacity to provide essential supplies to its allies – Britain, the Soviet Union, and later France.
    ​ Insofar as there was a post-war boom, it was the result of the old, coal-powered economies of Europe, Japan and South Korea using US dollars to fund the transition to oil – a process that is still within living memory. In the two decades 1953 to 1973, the world witnessed more economic growth and trade than had occurred in the previous 150 years of the coal age – creating a modern world which increasing numbers of us realise is already past its peak.
    ​ So, here’s a thought experiment – what would have happened in the 1930s if there was no such thing as oil?
    ​ First, although the least understood, is that productivity would have slumped across the industrialised economies as the coal which powered the machinery became harder and more expensive to obtain. Gradually, processes which had been automated would become labour intensive again. International, and even inter-regional trade and transportation would become harder to maintain, forcing a re-localisation of the economy. And ultimately, this economic slowdown would result in everybody becoming poorer (even if some became poorer than others).
    ​ Government – which more often messes things up than makes them better – would undoubtedly fail, as orthodox economic policy not only failed to restore prosperity but appeared to make things worse. This, in turn, would lead to the growth of unorthodox political ideas and the arrival of demagogic leaders who promised to make countries great again… but absent an energy source more powerful than the fast-depleting coal, even the most benign dictators would fail to deliver any kind of new deal to turn things around.
    ​ Elected politicians would also struggle to overcome the vested interests in the permanent state and the wider corporate ownership class, which would only allow for policies which did not threaten their own prosperity. The likely result would be a downward dumping which attempted to make the poorest people take the greatest hit to their prosperity. A new lower class, living in precarious conditions would likely emerge, trading labour for food and shelter rather than the monetary wages of the earlier age… a “precariat,” if you will. Ultimately though, much of the nominal wealth of the elites – government bonds, corporate shares, numbers in bank accounts, etc., – would be rendered worthless by a collapsing economy that has no pathway to sustainability, still less economic growth.
    ​ In the end, most of the corporate elite would probably be dispossessed as one or other version of collectivism rose to power in a last-ditch effort to restore the broad prosperity of the earlier age. But without the energy to make things happen, even the brutality of a Stalin, a Mussolini, or a Hitler could only preside over a further collapse and a slide back to the agrarian localism of a much earlier age.​ [There is no “sliding back”​ now, if you think about it.]
    ​ But, of course, the oil was there… in vast quantities. And its raw power propelled the USA and its allies to victory in the war and created the conditions for the unprecedented post-war boom… the “normal” that we have been somehow failing to get back to since the 1970s.
    ​ Despite its apparently small increased power compared to coal – around 10 megajoules per kilogram – the additional power provided by oil shaped the modern world. But its high points – sending men to the Moon, commercial supersonic flight, transplant surgery, microprocessors, etc., – are half a century or so behind us. Indeed, look closely enough and you will probably notice that a good deal of the built environment from those days is falling apart.
    ​ Oil, it turns out, came with the same issues as coal. It is a finite resource (at least on any practical timescale) which has been developed on a “low-hanging fruit” basis… starting with the cheapest and easiest deposits then moving on to the difficult and expensive. And yet all the while being expected to meet the demands of a rapacious debt-based financial system for permanent economic growth. So that each additional unit of energy that has to be invested in recovering the more energy-expensive oil is a unit of energy no longer available to be converted into profit and interest repayment by the corporations and the banks.
    ​ Notice too, that the economic landscape today has a certain resonance with the coal depression of the 1930s… remembering that history rhymes rather than repeats. Doesn’t the gig economy look a lot like those lines of unemployed people desperate to find any kind of work? Aren’t the tent cities that are now commonplace (if hidden for cosmetic reasons) in almost every western city very similar to the shanty housing of the depression era? Might foodbanks be a modern iteration of the charity soup kitchens of the 1930s?
    ​ The political leaders and captains of industry of the coal age might be forgiven to some extent for their failure to understand the central position of coal to their way of life. Then, as now, a few Cassandras– like William Stanley Jevons in The Coal Question – understood that in consuming its coal at an ever-faster rate, the British Empire was ultimately bringing about its own demise. But most of the economists of the day blithely promised that as one coal deposit depleted another would be found… and, indeed, with the development of oil-powered machinery, previously unrecoverable coal was eventually produced.
    ​ In this sense though, the obvious absence of an alternative to oil should have been a cause for concern from the outset. Indeed, in the immediate post-war years it had been possible to accurately predict the peak of continental US oil production based upon a 40-year lag between the discovery of an oil field and the peak of its productivity. Since peak oil discovery in the USA was in the early-1930s, the peak of US production should have arrived around 1970-71… which it did. And since the peak of world oil discovery was in 1964, it followed that the peak of world production would be in 2004-05… which it was.
    ​ As happened in 1927 with coal, the 2005 peak in conventional oil production created the same price spike which fed through to general price rises across the economy. This time, aided by the fumbling incompetence of central bankers, rising interest rates were added to the mix. But the result was the same – a banking and finance crash followed by a depression that we have never recovered from. Indeed, the only reason that we witnessed even the anaemic growth of the 2010s was the American so-called “fracking miracle.”
    ​ It wasn’t really a miracle though. Both the discovery of the shale plays and the invention of the fracking technology had occurred decades before the 2008 crash. The reason the shale plays remained undeveloped was down to cost. With oil prices in the 30 to 50-dollar-a-barrel range there was no way fracked shale oil could turn a profit. But the oil peak of 2005, along with the post-2008 financial landscape changed that.
    ​ World oil prices exceeded $100-per-barrel either side of the crash, prompting economists to predict $200-per-barrel oil in the 2010s. Suddenly, fracking looked like a good bet for investors. And this was aided by the low-growth, low-interest environment following the crash. The return on safe investments was negative once inflation was taken into account. And even riskier dabbling in the stock and bond markets brought relatively small returns. For the investment chancer looking to make a quick fortune, junk bonds were the only game in town. And the best junk bonds on the market were the bonds offered by the fracking companies.
    ​ The fracking experiment taught us another important lesson… if only we had heeded it. $100-a-barrel oil (at 2008 values) turned out to be unsustainable. As businesses and households adjusted their spending to account for the higher oil price, discretionary sectors of the economy slumped. With less economic activity following reduced discretionary spending, demand for oil slumped… as it happened, just at the point when millions of barrels of fracked oil were arriving on the market. The oil price slumped. And with the exception of a few companies drilling in a handful of “sweet spots,” the fracking companies went bust.
    ​ Far from the establishment media’s “Saudi America,” and the “century of energy independence,” the hydraulic fracturing of the North American shale plays bought us an additional decade of oil production growth. But with no serious replacement on the table, that decade would have been best used to mitigate the inevitable economic shrinking and disintegration that is now washing over us. American, and global oil production finally peaked in November 2018. By the middle of 2019, the global economy was entering a recession – although this was overtaken by the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, followed by the insane attempt at economic warfare with one of the most resource-rich states on the planet. So that even now, in the midst of a global energy crisis and a gathering globally-synchronised recession, establishment politicians, economists, and media seem oblivious to the energy shortages which are driving us to ruin.
    ​ Maybe it was inevitable. A species which seemingly evolved to deny death and despair was able to treat oil reserves which it knew to be finite and consume them as if they would last forever… or at least until clever people somewhere else came up with an alternative. And yet even after global peak conventional oil had sent the global economy into a death spiral, we somehow managed to pretend all would turn out well, and that the final recoverable deposits of unconventional oil would somehow be infinite.
    ​ How different might the post-war years – or even the last 16 years – have been if we had treated cheap oil as the temporary gift that we should have understood it to be?

    A fatally repeated misunderstanding

    ​ U.S. Drivers Warned to Brace For Jump in Gasoline Prices
    “There is every reason to believe gasoline prices will screech even higher going forward​.”
    https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/US-Drivers-Warned-to-Brace-For-Jump-in-Gasoline-Prices.html

    March 15, 2024 at 10:24 pm #154743
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Israel’s Security Chief Cheers Killing of Palestinian Child
    Twelve-year-old Rami al-Halhouli was fatally shot while playing with fireworks in a Jerusalem refugee camp
    ​ Ben-Gvir claimed the border officer “shot a terrorist” who had tried to “use firecrackers” against Israeli forces the night prior, arguing the guard did “exactly what was expected of him” in executing the unarmed preteen.
    ​ “I salute the soldier who killed the terrorist who tried to shoot fireworks at him and the troops. This is exactly how you should act against terrorists – with determination and precision,” he added in another post.

    Israel’s Security Chief Cheers Killing of Palestinian Child

    Israel killed more children in Gaza in last 5 months than all conflicts worldwide for last 4 years: UN rapporteur
    ‘Destroying a population from its roots. Genocide is a process, not an act, and what is happening in Gaza is a tragedy foretold,’ says Francesca Albanese
    https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-killed-more-children-in-gaza-in-last-5-months-than-all-conflicts-worldwide-for-last-4-years-un-rapporteur/3163509

    Israel To Move Civilians to ‘Humanitarian Islands’ Before Invasion​ [This forced dislocation is also a war crime.]
    Tel Aviv claims it will move the 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah to other areas of the Strip, then attack the city.

    Israel To Move Civilians to ‘Humanitarian Islands’ Before Invasion

    ​ The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) food distribution center in Gaza was hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing five. The bombing of the facility is the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on food distribution in Gaza. The Israeli military operations in Gaza and restrictions on aid entering the Strip have placed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on the brink of starvation.
    ​ Witnesses, Gazan health officials, and the UN reported that Israel attacked the UNRWA warehouse in Rafah on Wednesday, killing five people, including one UNRWA worker. Officials reported that scores were injured in the attack without providing a number. The Israeli onslaught in Gaza has had a massive impact on aid workers.
    ​ One Palestinian in Rafah said the attack was particularly concerning because UNRWA sites are generally considered safer. “It’s a UNRWA center, expected to be secure,” one resident said. Over the past five months, 165 UNRWA workers have been killed, and over 150 of the agency’s buildings in Gaza have been hit.

    Israel Bombs Food Distribution Center in Gaza, Killing Five

    ​ War on Gaza: Over 20 killed in new massacre of Palestinians waiting for ai​d , Israeli helicopters fired on crowd of thousands waiting to receive aid
    At least 20 Palestinians were killed and over 100 wounded by Israeli fire on Thursday evening while they were awaiting aid in northern Gaza, eyewitnesses have said.
    ​ The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that 20 dead bodies and 155 wounded people have arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza alone. It said that it is working to retrieve more dead bodies.
    ​ The ministry added that it expects the death toll to rise because of “the seriousness of the injuries” of individuals reaching Gaza’s hospitals.
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dozens-killed-new-israeli-massacre-palestinians-waiting-aid

    March 15, 2024 at 10:25 pm #154744
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ MIT student group facing threats of expulsion for supporting Palestine​ [This is serious. They are ​upholding apartheid against an African woman-of-color.]
    ​ The President of the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), Safiyyah Ogundipe, said that the University administration is trying to silence actions supporting Palestine with disciplinary investigations and threats of expulsion.
    ​ Ogundipe told Anadolu that she evaluated the banning of support demonstrations for Palestine and attempts by administrators to silence students, especially at MIT and other US universities.
    ​ The senior chemical engineering major said CAA emerged as an activism movement against the apartheid regime based on racial discrimination in South Africa in the past and, today, it takes a stance against Israel’s illegal interventions against Palestine.​..
    ..She said, at MIT, there were several sponsored research projects funded by the Israeli Defence Ministry and through the Anti-Apartheid Scientists campaign launched in December. CAA urged students and staff to withdraw from companies and research projects complicit in Israeli apartheid, Occupation and genocide…
    ​..She expressed that CAA at MIT organised protests in response to Israel’s actions, including the bombings in Rafah resulting in casualties. It called on MIT to sever ties with Israeli forces.
    ​ As a result, CAA received a warning letter, was suspended and its leaders faced threats of expulsion and bans from leading unauthorised demonstrations. Expulsion from MIT was threatened for further rule violations.
    ​ Ogundipe said MIT Chancellor, Sally Kornbluth, swiftly announced in a video that CAA was expelled from the school.

    MIT student group facing threats of expulsion for supporting Palestine

    ​ Italian defense minister says Rome suspended weapons supplies to Israel
    ​ Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Rome did not supply weapons to Israel after October 7, 2023.​ “After October 7, there were no new authorizations from the relevant organization to transfer weapons to Israel, which led to the suspension of deliveries. The licenses that had been issued before October 7 were already mostly implemented,” the minister said at the parliament.
    ​ He also said that shipments that had been authorized but not implemented before said date were re-examined to make sure that “the list does not contain materials that, if used, could affect the residents of the Gaza Strip.”
    https://tass.com/world/1759701

    ​ The Russian military police have set up an additional checkpoint as part of their monitoring effort at the disengagement line separating the forces of Syria and Israel in the Golan Heights, the deputy chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria (a division of the Russian defense ministry) said.
    ​ “As part of the effort to monitor the situation at the Bravo disengagement line separating the armed forces of Israel and the Syrian Arab Republic in the Golan Heights, an additional checkpoint of the Russian military police has been created,” Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit said.
    https://tass.com/politics/1759723

    ​ Houthis Go Hypersonic? How Ansar Allah’s Advance in Missile Tech Could Trigger US Defeat in Mideast
    ​ A military source close to Yemen’s Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement has informed Sputnik that the militia has carried out a successful test flight of a hypersonic missile and is preparing to add it into its arsenal.
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20240314/houthis-go-hypersonic-how-ansar-allahs-advance-in-missile-tech-could-trigger-us-defeat-in-mideast-1117334551.html

    March 15, 2024 at 10:26 pm #154745
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ US Rejects Russian Ceasefire Proposal for Ukraine
    CIA Director William Burns warned that the US is running out of time to support Ukraine
    ​ Russia’s attempt to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine, along the current lines of control, was met with a firm rejection in Washington. US officials reiterated their stance, stating that they would only engage in talks with Moscow with Kiev’s consent.
    ​ According to Reuters, in late 2023 and early 2024, Russian intermediaries reached out to US officials seeking to establish a ceasefire. The Kremlin was hoping to freeze the fighting along the current lines of control. “The contacts with the Americans came to nothing,” an unnamed senior Russian official told the outlet.
    ​ Russian officials said some progress was made, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan agreed to a call with his counterpart in the Kremlin. Putin’s adviser, Yuri Ushakov, suggested the idea of a ceasefire to Sullivan, but Sullivan refused to talk about Ukraine.

    US Rejects Russian Ceasefire Proposal for Ukraine

    ​ The Russian aerospace forces successfully attacked the assembly lines of unmanned kamikaze boats “Magura-V5” and “Sea Baby” in the port of Odessa using Kh-59MK2 cruise missiles, considered one of the most difficult to detect weapons.
    https://avia-pro.net/news/v-portu-odessy-unichtozheny-sborochnye-linii-bezekipazhnyh-katerov-kamikadze

    ​ Scenario for Military Takeover of Ukrainian Parliament Was Written by US – Expert
    “This could be a scenario of replacing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky without holding elections,” Alexander Dudchak, researcher at the Institute of CIS Countries and expert of the ‘Other Ukraine’ movement, told Sputnik.
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20240314/scenario-for-military-takeover-of-ukrainian-parliament-was-written-by-us—expert-1117334224.html

    ​Eleni sends this from Andrew Korybko: NATO Has Secret Agenda for Troops In Ukraine [Denying Ukrainian assets/collateral to global corporations might shorten this war.]
    ​ Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned about the impending partition of Ukraine. According to her, “All these statements that Macron and other NATO politicians make, about the possibility of introducing contingents or some kind of paramilitary units into the territory of Ukraine, are related to the partition of what they see as the remnants of Ukraine…They are ready to occupy and partition Ukraine.” What she didn’t mention, however, is that this will likely be an asymmetrical partition.
    ​ Instead of Ukraine’s neighbors officially divvying it up like former President and incumbent Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev suggested via the map that he recently spoke in front of, NATO states are unlikely to formally reincorporate their lost lands. Rather, what’s more likely to happen in the event that they form a “coalition of the willing” to conventionally intervene there is that they’ll carve out “spheres of influences” on the pretext of protecting their “strategic borders”.​..
    ​..The end effect would be to formally preserve Ukrainian statehood per the West’s officially stated objective that “justifies” their proxy war against Russia through that former Soviet Republic while nevertheless asymmetrically partitioning it into “spheres of economic influence” per the Davos agenda. It’s also possible that with time some of Ukraine’s western neighbors like Poland might consider entering into a “confederation’ with the adjacent region under their control but that’s still a far-fetched scenario.
    ​ Their taxpayers could be stuck with the bill for reconstructing those formerly Ukrainian regions, plus the locals would become citizens with equal rights (including voting ones), which those countries’ people might firmly oppose and therefore potentially rebel against. It’s much less economically and politically costly to simply siphon wealth from those regions in exchange for limited security support than to constitutionally enshrine enduring economic, political, and security rights to their locals for prestige.
    ​ For these reasons, while Zakharova is likely correct in assessing that plans are afoot for partitioning Ukraine depending on several situational variables (e.g. the conflict’s military-strategic dynamics and domestic politics like in Poland’s case), everything probably wouldn’t unfold like the public imagines. Asymmetrical partition between Ukraine’s western neighbors into “spheres of economic influence” alongside a de facto Korean-like partition between NATO and Russia is much more foreseeable.
    https://korybko.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-facing-the-scenario-of

    ​ Medvedev responds to Zelensky ‘peace plan’​ [Crashing western finance by withdrawing Ukrainian collateral is my best advice to Russia.]
    The senior Russian official has proposed a “soft” alternative that would see Ukraine absorbed by his country
    A “reasonable” peace agreement with Ukraine would involve Moscow taking full control over the country, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.
    https://swentr.site/russia/594272-medvedev-peace-formula-ukraine/

    March 15, 2024 at 10:27 pm #154746
    zerosum
    Participant

    American TV is calling voting in Russia a joke etc..
    Calling “pot calling the kettle black” would be an insult to both.
    ————-

    March 15, 2024 at 10:28 pm #154747
    John Day
    Participant

    Macron comments on Trump presidency​ [Depends on what the meaning of “is” is, doesn’t it?]
    The Republican candidate may not get a chance to deliver on his promise to resolve the Ukrainian conflict, the French leader believes
    ​ Noting Macron’s reluctance to engage in direct communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the interviewers wondered if the United States could potentially mediate such talks, especially if Donald Trump is reelected.
    ​ “As far as I’m informed, I don’t think Donald Trump is President of the United States,” the French leader claimed, adding that he works with the leaders he gets.
    ​ At the same time Macron said there was “nothing personal” behind his decision to refrain from dialogue with Putin. “Undoubtedly, I am the head of the state that used to talk to him more than anyone else.”
    https://swentr.site/news/594289-macron-trump-putin-talks/

    ​ Boeing Whistleblower: ‘If Anything Happens to Me, It’s Not Suicide’
    ​ The Boeing whistleblower who supposedly killed himself reportedly told a close family friend not to believe it if it was announced he had committed suicide.
    62-year-old John Barnett died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Charleston County coroner’s office in South Carolina said earlier this week.
    ​ Barnett had previously raised concerns about the company’s production issues having worked for the company for 32 years before leaving in 2017.
    ​ According to his attorneys, Barnett had “exposed very serious safety problems with the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and was retaliated against and subjected to a hostile work environment” and was in the middle of a legal deposition against Boeing.
    ​ “He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on. We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it,” said the attorneys.
    https://modernity.news/2024/03/15/boeing-whistleblower-if-anything-happens-to-me-its-not-suicide/

    ​ Whistleblower Targeted After Exposing 973% SURGE in Heart Failure Among Navy Pilots
    ​ A United States Navy medic who blew the whistle on an explosive report showing a massive increase in heart issues among military pilots has been blocked by the Department of Defense (DOD) from accessing his work computer.
    ​ Navy Medical Service Corps Lt. Ted Macie shared shocking information about the surge in heart failure among military personnel.
    Macie claimed that members of the U.S. military have experienced massive increases in heart-related issues, presenting Defense Department data showing the following:
    ​ 937% increase in heart failure
    ​ 152% increase in cardiomyopathy
    ​ 69% increase in ischemic heart disease
    ​ 36% increase in hypertensive disease
    ​ 63% increase in other forms of heart disease

    Whistleblower Targeted After Exposing 973% SURGE in Heart Failure Among Navy Pilots

    ​ Martin Armstrong, Canada to Incorporate Social Scores in Banking
    ​ Open Banking Excellence, a World Bank partner that originated in the UK, claims that it will host all of a bank’s relevant needs in one place. The organization, which has reached 40 countries, aims to “create exceptional platforms and content that promotes knowledge sharing, new thinking and partnerships within the industry – catalysing the adoption of Open Finance and Data for better financial inclusion worldwide.”…
    ​ “It’s about having that fairer, more inclusive, more open society,” said Helen Child, founder of Open Banking Excellence. Open Society, well, that does sound familiar. Why is there a need for inclusivity and fairness in banking when it should come down to numbers? “It drives financial inclusion,” she added, “It’s democratizing data.”​…
    ​..Look at what happened to Nigel Farage. He never committed a crime or did anything to warrant what many have called the “Farage fiasco.” Nigel was suddenly debanked by Coutts and was unable to access any of his checking or savings accounts. His credit cards were deactivated. He was unable to participate in society without a moment’s notice.
    ​ Farage did his due diligence and found that there were countless people who experienced the same financial attack carried out by the banks on behalf of the government.
    ​ This is a widespread phenomenon. We saw it happening commonly during COVID lockdowns, where users were not permitted to access places if their digital COVID passports failed. In China, when banks were facing a liquidity crisis, the CCP simply denied depositors the right to access their money and blocked them from physically accessing their banks. The government successfully prevented a bank run. We saw a few celebrities debanked from the system for voicing unpopular opinions without any legal proceedings or crimes committed.

    Canada to Incorporate Social Scores in Banking

    What’s Inside Trudeau’s ‘Orwellian’ Speech Law Threatening Jail Time for Thought Crimes?
    https://sputnikglobe.com/20240314/whats-inside-trudeaus-orwellian-speech-law-threatening-jail-time-for-thought-crimes-1117328250.html

    March 15, 2024 at 10:29 pm #154748
    Afewknowthetruth
    Participant

    We can rely on jb-hb to attempt to downplay a horrifying state of the atmosphere by using fake/fraudulent mathematics, better described a non-mathematics.

    When calculating a percentage change we take the new value minus the previous value and divide by the original

    Thus, if there is a change from 100 to 120, that is an increase of 20 or a 20% increase..

    The most recent values published by CO2earth are

    Mar. 14, 2024 425.56 ppm
    Mar. 14, 2023 420.30 ppm
    1 Year Change 5.26 ppm

    5.26 divided by 425.56 times 100 = 1.23%

    There are two baselines for atmospheric CO2: 280 ppm, the preindustrial baseline; 230 ppm, the 800,000 average.

    Thus, current value is 425.56/280 = 151 or 51% above the preindustrial baseline.

    It is better to think in terms of the past 800-000 years, when the average was 230 ppm and the peaks were around 260 ppm. .

    No wonder the Earth is in meltdown.

    Of course, we know from previous experience that jb-hb is incapable of accepting reality and tries to argue on the basis or preposterous thinking, arguing justfor the sake of argiung..

    Back in the real world,

    Mar. 14, 2024 425.56 ppm
    Mar. 14, 2023 420.30 ppm
    1 Year Change 5.26 ppm (1.25%)

    and if this rate of change is maintained we break through 450 ppm in just over 4 years.

    March 15, 2024 at 10:40 pm #154749
    aspnaz
    Participant

    The very nature of alliances is that they are a two-way street. Americans should rightly expect to realize benefits from U.S. participation in NATO, just as the citizens of other NATO nations can expect to benefit from their country’s relationship with the United States.

    Nothing says decline like the world’s superpower moaning that its leeches are not pulling their weight. The nature of superpowers is that they need to have friends and they need to buy those friends; who would really want to be friends with a superpower because they are nice, who would want to be friends with the bully at school, same concept.

    NATO members have provided the USA will “moral” cover whenever the USA has decided to obliterate some poor, weak nation in bongo-bongo land, satiating its blood lust that prefers to demolish the weak than take on the strong, such as Russia. Well, now the super power is failing and is moaning that these collaborators, the people like Israel, the EU, the five eyes etc that covered for their atrocities are not pulling their weight.

    Don’t worry USA, they are still covering for your atrocities. Israel has learned from its master and is now killing its own citizens based on their race and religion, you must be so proud of their atrocities; but watch the NATO leaders cover for Israel, the moral backbone of the west is absent, they will continue in the same vein.

    The leadership in these countries is as weak as the leadership of the USA, they cannot stand on their own two feet, they are all bought like the leaders of the USA. The end is nigh but it won’t be a nice end.

    March 15, 2024 at 10:52 pm #154750
    chooch
    Participant

    Great, I will have to get the lawn mower out sooner.

    March 15, 2024 at 11:11 pm #154751
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    Geez Benton, don’t shit the Lazy Boy. Them jewdocs got you on them angermeds. Is Dr D Jesus? Beyond reproach? Just kneel and pray to his wonderfullness? Fuck off. Ever since that we here are doctors , lawyers and engineers comment by Doctor Knowitall…I’m gonna make a note on nonsense. White Hats want you just as dead as Black Hats, collecting their jewbanker government check as they do it.

    March 15, 2024 at 11:24 pm #154752
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Dr D said

    “• US Intelligence ‘Threat Assessment’ Says Hamas Isn’t Going Away (Antiwar)

    Pointing out that, no surprise, the casualty numbers in Gaza are made up and much inflated. So we’re creating a new Holocaust Myth. Can we not do that this time but tell the truth? It’s not like it isn’t happening. The Israeli numbers are minimized and not admitted. And everyone’s leaving, as they have dual passports. Economy is failing. “Built a desert and call it Peace”. Nice victory you have there.

    But saying, look, we can’t know what’s going on, but I can tell it’s a lie. Probably Hamas is being attrition’d bad. A lot of the deaths aren’t women, but these guys, laid out in sheets so you can’t tell. Why would they admit to Nutso how many soldiers remain? But we don’t have to eat the cow s—t they’re shoveling either.

    Dr D is now minimizing the Jewish genocide in Gaza. Interesting. I guess he will next be telling us that the demolished buildings we evacuated first, the hospitals also evacuated first, before being turned into rubble. This is why the USA is dying, Jew supporters like Dr D make excuses and try to minimise the atrocities done using their tax money. You will continue to minimize your guilt with your inability to take responsibility for your actions, while the rest of the world is watching in disgust at Israel and the USA. The USA is full of Dr Ds, which is why it is going down the toilet in a tsunami of greed and corruption.

    March 15, 2024 at 11:32 pm #154753
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Celticbiker said

    White Hats want you just as dead as Black Hats, collecting their jewbanker government check as they do it.

    Dr D’s perspective assumes a movie-like dream world, where good people and bad people get into positions of power and then the good people win. The usual bullshit we have been fed from Hollywood; it has no evidence of happening in real life. The people with the power are the ones who take the money to use that power to help other people in positions of power, regardless of the rules. Notice that there is not a single “white hat” in congress opposing the Gaza genocide, so what happened to them all, are they in hiding, secret congressmen waiting for their moment to jump up and beat the bad black hats? Only the average American, like Benton the Jew, would fall for this sort of placebo nonsense.

    March 15, 2024 at 11:37 pm #154754
    aspnaz
    Participant

    Afewknowthetruth said

    We can rely on jb-hb to attempt to downplay a horrifying state of the atmosphere by using fake/fraudulent mathematics, better described a non-mathematics.

    AFKTT back again to remind us that not all humans are cognitively equivalent. His reasoning technique is to throw shit, like a chimpanzee in a cage. Who needs a zoo after reading a few comments from AFKTT, I feel like I am in the cage with the chimpanzees.

    March 15, 2024 at 11:40 pm #154755
    poppie
    Participant

    CelticBiker
    2 comments in a row that are nothing but insult and telling him its his fault because its true. Thats the definition of an abuser. I hope you hit a june bug at 110.

    March 15, 2024 at 11:42 pm #154756
    aspnaz
    Participant

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/boeing-whistleblower-if-anything-happens-me-its-not-suicide

    For those who believe in white hats and how they are going to save you. Ooops!

    March 15, 2024 at 11:54 pm #154757
    Oroboros
    Participant

    Micron’s “Wife” Answers the Allegations

    .

    .

    March 15, 2024 at 11:54 pm #154758
    Oroboros
    Participant

    March 15, 2024 at 11:56 pm #154759
    jb-hb
    Participant

    We can rely on jb-hb to attempt to downplay a horrifying state of the atmosphere by using fake/fraudulent mathematics, better described a non-mathematics.

    Dude, if you cannot do the math to convert parts per million into percentage, I can help you:

    https://www.omnicalculator.com/conversion/ppm

    Please, I would LOVE to see you demonstrate that 5.31 ppm does not equal 0.000531%

    I was sporting and took your largest figure, which you described as shocking and exceptionally large without even arguing the point.

    The increase over the year-ago level is both shocking and unsurprising.

    It is shocking because there is a recent set of results with exceptionally large* year-to-year increases

    0.000531% was the biggest number you had, so now you’re down to, as usual, throwing adjectives around.

    When calculating a percentage change we take the new value minus the previous value and divide by the original

    Only when you want to obscure CO2 as a percentage of the Earth’s atmosphere, that the change was — which if we are NICE to you and assume was 5.31 ppm, that’s a change in the Earth’s atmosphere of 0.000531%

    When the big pharma companies were trying to hoodwink people into taking the notavax, they described it as 98% effective didn’t they?

    They came to this calculation in this way (approximately):

    You’re only 98.9% likely, as an average of the entire population including octogenarians, morbidly obese, type 20 diabetes, etc.

    There’s only 1.1% remaining from 97.9% to 100%

    1.1% x 98% = 1.07%

    Don’t double check our (non) scientific methods, but since our official statement is that we improved your chances of survival by 1.07%, that means our medication is 98% effective.

    Guys! Look. we figured out a way to express the small number as a big number!

    Because we divided the thing by the thing. Our “vaccine” is so super effective

    Since this is what you call non-fraudulent math, Afewknowthetruth, would you like to call the incessant promotion of the non-vaccine as 98% effective as super honest, best way of describing its benefits?

    Either that reasoning – YOUR REASONING- works on both the notavax and how we express CO2 changes or it doesn’t.

    I’ll just observe, as anyone watching you is, that you want to represent a change in the atmosphere of 0.000531% as 20%.

    Since CO2 is only 0.04% of the Earth’s atmosphere, you’d HAVE to turn to any method that lets you quote big numbers, wouldn’t you.

    Or you could just not be a dick. You posted a marxist nihilist manifesto in favor of blowing up all the hydroelectric dams and destroying all the infrastructure of civilization and said 7 billion dead people would be a good thing. You might want to work on that before getting into CO2 numbers again.

    March 16, 2024 at 12:24 am #154760
    Oroboros
    Participant

    .

    March 16, 2024 at 12:36 am #154761
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    Hey poople, I didn’t wish him dead, like you just did to me…so who’s the abuser?

    March 16, 2024 at 12:41 am #154762
    Oroboros
    Participant

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