René Magritte The therapeutist 1937
Van Drew
https://twitter.com/i/status/1791130578823057538
BBee
Satan Asks Democrats To Tone Down All The Evil pic.twitter.com/Sowyy58L52
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) May 17, 2024
Benz
The CIA & the State Department want to "Knife" their domestic political opponents, but are barred by law from doing so directly. So they use a "Boomerang" to do it. Here's how: https://t.co/Hc3D95HVWF pic.twitter.com/QzQv1dkyYM
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 17, 2024
1 . E l o n a n n o u n c e d t h a t T w i t t e r i s g o n e f o r g o o d , a n d a l l t h e c o r e s y s t e m s h a v e n o w m i g r a t e d t o t h e X d o m a i n .
“..left-wing local, state, and federal prosecutors are tying Trump up in court on crimes that have never been seen before and will never be again after the election. All the cases are politically motivated, with many coordinated with the White House..”
• The Biden Re-Election Strategy (Victor Davis Hanson)
President Joe Biden polls at or below 40 percent approval. Historically, such unpopularity has made it almost impossible for a president to be reelected. Biden is not so much an octogenarian as an unhealthy and prematurely aging 80-year-old. It is America’s irony that he is fit for almost no other job in the country other than the presidency, which apparently allows for a three-day-a-week ceremonial role while others in the shadows run the country. So how does Biden become renominated and reelected, as polls show he is behind in almost every critical swing state on nearly every issue? Answer: not by campaigning, not by championing his record, and especially not by doubling down on his neo-socialist and now unpopular agendas. Instead, his campaign is focused on four other strategies to beat former President Donald Trump.
First, left-wing local, state, and federal prosecutors are tying Trump up in court on crimes that have never been seen before and will never be again after the election. All the cases are politically motivated, with many coordinated with the White House. Even if Trump is not convicted by blue-state prosecutors, in blue-state courtrooms, in front of blue-state juries, he will lose critical campaigning time. Trump may end up paying out $1 billion in legal fees and fines. At 76, the monotonous days in court are designed to destroy him financially, physically, and mentally. Biden and his operatives know that, in the long term, they may have fatally damaged the American legal system with such judicial sabotage. But short-term, they hope to destroy Trump before the ballots are cast. Second, in his fourth year, Biden is suddenly selling government favors to special-interest voting blocs, or hoping to bring short-term relief to voters at the expense of long-term damage to the nation.
For elite college students and graduates, there are now billions of dollars in student-loan cancellations, despite a Supreme Court ruling declaring such targeted contractual amnesties illegal. For consumers, before the election, Biden will likely drain the last drops from the critical Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gas prices — now sky-high due to his previous disastrous green policies. If that is not enough, Biden has ordered Ukraine not to hit Russian oil facilities to avoid panic in the global petroleum markets before early and mail-in balloting begin. Biden will quietly jawbone the Federal Reserve Bank to lower interest rates and reinflate the economy, despite his own creation of hyperinflation that caused interest rates to rise in the first place. He will pander to Arab-American voters in swing-state Michigan by cutting arms deliveries to Israel, even as it seeks to destroy the killers of Oct. 7. And if that mollification is not sufficient to win Michigan, he will suddenly slap higher tariffs on imported Chinese electrical vehicles to win back apostate union auto workers.
Three, the left learned after 2016 that the only way to beat Trump is to change the way Americans vote. So under the cover of the COVID-19 lockdown, the left sued in critical states to reduce Election Day to a mere construct, while 70 percent of voters mailed in their ballots or voted by early, rolling balloting over many weeks. The key was the inability to fully authenticate votes, given the old practice of showing up on Election Day and presenting an ID was declared “racist.”
Four, Biden, as he did in 2020, will outsource his campaign to the media, 95 percent of which is left-wing. Talking televised heads will claim Biden is “sharp as a knife” while focusing on Trump’s tweets, Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, and lurid but irrelevant testimonies that permeate Trump’s court appearances. Trump will continue to hold weekend-long, massive 100,000-person rallies, even in blue states. Meanwhile, Biden’s fixers in the media, administrative state, and legal community will counter that even with no crowds and no campaigning, Biden can win through 24/7 nonstop “October Surprises” — all summer long. So expect more false “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” and “Jan. 6 insurrection” hoaxes and their new replacements designed to smother the airwaves with salacious scandals nonstop.
Biden’s fading tenure is similar to the last sad months of Woodrow Wilson’s second term, when in 1919-20, the country was assured that a bedridden president was somehow hard at work, even as his wife, doctors, and handlers kept everyone else away. Biden’s keepers do not seem to care about the president’s own failing health or his dismal polls. They discount his rare, anemic, and disastrous public appearances. They laugh off the huge Trump rallies. And they certainly could care less about the bad optics of pandering to special interests at the expense of the country or the damage done to the American legal and balloting systems. Instead, Bidenites believe they can reelect an unhealthy, unpopular, and unsuccessful president by any means necessary. And they may be right.
“Potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people”.
• “Up to a Third” of Illegal Immigrants Are Registered To Vote (NTB)
I know there were still those among us who were truly convinced that 2024 was going to be maybe, sort of, somehow, a fair fight. But even those holdouts can finally disabuse themselves of that notion: Based on the latest available data and an enhanced version of a stress-tested methodology from a scholarly journal, a new study by Just Facts has found that about 10 percent to 27 percent of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote. Researchers originally made this determination based on data pulled from the 2008 election. They found: •”roughly one quarter of non-citizens” in the U.S. “were likely registered to vote;” •”6.4 percent of non-citizens actually voted;” •”81.8 percent of them ‘reported voting for Barack Obama;'” and •”illegal votes cast by non-citizens ‘likely’ changed ‘important election outcomes’ in favor of Democrats, ‘including Electoral College votes’ and a ‘pivotal’ U.S. Senate race that enabled Democrats to pass Obamacare.”
There has been some dispute over these figures, including recently from the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who claimed that a 2023 data review revealed a much lower incidence rate of 1% of illegals voting. Yet recent voting data from the 2022 midterms does appear to indicate the considerably higher upper bound of 27%, a rate high enough to significantly influence U.S. elections (many elections are razor thin – even a few thousand votes in one direction would secure victory). There are, it’s worth stressing, a lot of illegal immigrants in the US: The U.S. Census recorded more than 19 million adult non-citizens living in the U.S. during 2022. Given their voter registration rates, this means that about two million to five million of them are illegally registered to vote. These figures are potentially high enough to overturn the will of the American people in major elections, including congressional seats and the presidency.
Note that, according to Just Facts, “uncertainties in the data” could be leading to an undercount of the illegal immigrant voting rate: “The Census Bureau counts only the number of non-citizens who respond to Census surveys,” for instance, “and some immigrants, especially unauthorized ones, avoid such surveys out of fear of exposing their immigration status.” “Certain groups of immigrants,” meanwhile, “often misrepresent themselves as citizens in Census surveys.” Republicans recently introduced legislation to require proof of citizenship in U.S. elections, though it is highly unlikely to pass Congress, let alone get signed by the president. Gird yourselves for November, folks. The fix might already be in.
“That’s why libertarianism, and now anarchy, has become popular. The best we can hope for with these beloved statesmen (and stateswomen, and soon to be statetransgenders), is that they do nothing.”
• Whistling Past the National Train Wreck (Jeffries)
Yesterday, Jason Whitlock reported on one Dexter Taylor, a software engineer who was just convicted and sentenced to ten years for constructing his own guns without a license. Shades of January 6. Taylor is Black, by the way, for those of you to whom that matters. I don’t expect to see former crack dealer turned FBI informant “Reverend” Al Sharpton leading a protest about this particular Black man being a victim of injustice. Our record-setting prisons are overflowing with people like Taylor, of all races. People who most decidedly don’t belong behind bars. Having watched enough of those Investigation Discovery shows, and cops gone wild videos, I often wonder just how many actual criminals are in prison. The system devotes so much effort to framing innocent people, that they may no longer be capable of convicting truly guilty ones.
I could have titled this Substack Whistling Past the American Graveyard. Maybe I should have. But America 2.0 isn’t literally dead yet. On life support? Yes. With an almost certain terminal prognosis? Yes. I used the train wreck analogy because everywhere we look, things are wrecked. A sad vestige of what they were even a decade ago. It’s fitting that we haven’t addressed our Third World infrastructure for over sixty years. What you see is what you get now. America is in critical condition, and it looks it. You can judge this book by its cover. Give me your obese, your tattooed, your weezing, chronically ill with oxygen tanks and walkers. Wretched refuse indeed. Your endless migrants, who don’t speak English and urinate and defecate in public. What’s not to love?
A society is reflected in its leaders. And what leaders America 2.0 has! Our political “representatives” are so dedicated to not representing us that every piece of legislation they pass is assumed to be yet another figurative drone strike to the population. I’ve been a political junkie for over fifty years, and I couldn’t tell you when the last law was passed that benefited the People in the slightest way. That’s why libertarianism, and now anarchy, has become popular. The best we can hope for with these beloved statesmen (and stateswomen, and soon to be statetransgenders), is that they do nothing. That we pay them their generous salaries, and give them the lucrative benefits very few of us get, to maybe rape an underage page, or be bribed by a special interest group. Just don’t pass any legislation. Pretty please.
As I wrote recently in depth about, Americans also have to contend with the occupying force of militarized police officers. They are the standing army Thomas Jefferson warned about. They serve no function other than to annoy, harass, and sometimes kill the befuddled citizens who pay them. They are never there when you need them, and are incapable of solving any real crime. They are good at beating people (as long as you are a vulnerable target who represents no danger to them), planting evidence, and lying on their police reports. But people love them. Jolly coppers on parade, as Randy Newman called them long ago. The best you can hope for is to completely avoid any interaction with them. They are upholding the systemic corruption. Doing the bidding of their masters. Guarding the train wreck.
Our government agencies are all worthless, providing no real services other than to begrudgingly pay us back the money they stole from us (Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Compensation), or provide the benefits they promised (military personnel). But, like savage beasts that are always hungry, they must be fed. Paid better than those who pay them, and with much better benefits. While conservatives bemoan “welfare,” which was altered significantly under Bill Clinton, so that fewer people receive less money, they fail to see the federal government itself for what it is: a gigantic, entitled welfare recipient. Think of Reagan’s mythical Welfare Queen. Living it up with house money. Taxpayer money.
“New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps..”
• The Demolition of Cohen on Cross Examination (Turley)
1. The Prosecutors
First, there are the prosecutors. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg originally (as did his predecessor) rejected this ridiculous legal theory and further stated that he could not imagine ever bringing a case where he would call former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen, let alone make him the entirety of a prosecution. Bragg’s suspension of the case led prosecutor Mark F. Pomerantz to resign. Pomerantz then wrote a book on the prosecution despite his colleagues objecting that he was undermining their work. Many of us viewed the book as unethical and unprofessional, but it worked. The pressure campaign forced Bragg to green-light the prosecution. Pomerantz also met with Cohen in pushing the case. Bragg then selected Matthew Colangelo to lead the case. Colangelo was third in command of the Justice Department and gave up that plum position to lead the case against Trump. Colangelo was also paid by the Democratic National Committee for “political consulting.” So a former high-ranking official in the Biden Justice Department and a past consultant to the DNC is leading the prosecution.2. The Judge
Judge Juan Merchan has been criticized not only because he is a political donor to President Biden but his daughter is a high-ranking Democratic political operative who has raised millions in campaigns against Trump and the GOP. Merchan, however, was not randomly selected. He was specifically selected for the case due to his handling of an earlier Trump-related case.3. The Star Witness
Michael Cohen’s checkered history as a convicted, disbarred serial perjurer is well known. Now, Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., is under fire after disclosing that “I have met with [Cohen] a number of times to prepare him.” Goldman in turn paid Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, more than $157,000 dollars for political consulting. Outside the courtroom, there is little effort to avoid or hide such conflicts. While Democrats would be outraged if the situation were flipped in a prosecution of Biden, the cross-pollination between the DOJ, DNC, and Democratic operatives is dismissed as irrelevant by many in the media. Moreover, there is little outrage in New York that, in a presidential campaign where the weaponization of the legal system is a major issue, Trump is not allowed to discuss Cohen, Colangelo, or these conflicts.A New York Supreme Court judge is literally controlling what Trump can say in a presidential campaign about the alleged lawfare being waged against him. The most striking aspect of these controversial associations is how little was done to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interests. There were many judges available who were not donors or have children with such prominent political interests in the case. Bragg could have selected someone who was not imported by the Biden administration or someone who had not been paid by the DNC. There was no concern over the obvious appearance of a politically motivated and stacked criminal case. Whether or not these figures are conflicted or compromised, no effort was taken to assure citizens that any such controversies are avoided in the selection of the key players in this case.
What will be interesting is how the jury will react when, after casting its verdict, the members learn of these undisclosed associations. This entire production was constructed for their benefit to get them to convict Trump despite the absence of a clear crime or direct evidence. They were the marks and, like any good grift, the prosecutors were counting that their desire for a Trump conviction would blind them to the con. Bragg, Colangelo and others may be wrong. Putting aside the chance that Judge Merchan could summon up the courage to end this case before it goes to the jury, the grift may have been a bit too obvious. New Yorkers are a curious breed. Yes, they overwhelmingly hate Trump, but they also universally hate being treated like chumps. When they get this case, they just might look around the courtroom and decide that they are the suckers in a crooked game.
“..covertly designed to kill as many people as possible over a long period of time by switching off the natural defenses of your immune system, guaranteeing bewilderment and compliance by the hoodwinked masses..”
While our country sleepwalks through the deadly aftermath of the evil Covid-19 operation, the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the final touches on a nice bit of fuckery called its Pandemic Treaty on International Health Regulations (IHR) or “One Health” initiative, a Globalist power grab disguised in the saintly white robes of public health medicine. The agreement, to be finalized at the end of this month, will cede what’s left of your liberty to this unelected bureaucracy for the sake of global “equity and inclusivity,” meaning more lockdowns, constant surveillance, forced “vaccinations,” restrictions on medications, and censorship of anyone who voices a contrary opinion of these actions. Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s Covid-19 all over again, a second crack at controlling everything you do and every choice you might make by a cabal of governments and corporations, in other words, an international gang of fascists.
The WHO is an agency of the United Nations, run out of Switzerland. You might recall this is the same place where the World Economic Forum (the WEF, a.k.a. “Davos”) has its headquarters. For years, the WEF has been issuing blueprints for a techno-fascist global regime under which, they state baldly, “you will own nothing and be happy.” (And eat bugs.) These birds are not kidding around, though anyone can see the megalomania on display, the grandiose will-to-power that seeks to subjugate the plebes of the world — and radically decrease our numbers — so that a remaining tiny elite can enter into a post-modern, techno-transhuman utopia uncluttered with us “useless eaters.” The corporate money and organizational mojo out of Davos is behind what amounts to a homicidal racketeering scheme masquerading as disease prevention.
Of course, the pharmaceutical companies are front-and-center in the mix. They stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars distributing their mandated “vaccines” — which, you know by now, will not be properly tested, and, as currently being demonstrated by the Covid shots, are covertly designed to kill as many people as possible over a long period of time by switching off the natural defenses of your immune system, guaranteeing bewilderment and compliance by the hoodwinked masses. This might sound like a paranoid sci-fi movie, but, alas, the first phase has already happened starting in 2020. And since the pharma companies provide most of the advertising revenue for cable news media, you have been successfully mind-fucked into not seeing what is going on all around you: a whole lot of sickness and death.
Fortunately, it is the nature of megalomania that it always thinks too highly of its power and reaches too far. For one thing, this WHO “treaty” has to be signed by its member nations. Not all of them are eager to do that. One was Slovakia, whose prime minister, Robert Fico, was gunned down a few days after he announced his country would opt out. The coterie of the USA behind the senile and incompetent “Joe Biden,” is avid to sign us onto the treaty, largely because much of global Big Pharma operates out of our country, and rents so many members of Congress, especially most of the Democratic Party.
Original title: “Stoltenberg Reveals Real Purpose Of NATO”. Changed to the present one during the day yesterday,
• NATO Chief Allies With Gays (RT)
Standing up for the rights of LGBTQ people is one of the reasons for NATO’s existence, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg suggested on Friday. He was among hundreds of Western public officials, institutions and organizations to make a statement affirming the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT). “NATO exists to defend 32 nations, and our peoples’ right to live freely & in peace,” Stoltenberg posted on X, formerly Twitter. “On the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia & Transphobia, and every day: all love is equal. LGBTQ+ people deserve respect & dignity, and I am proud to call myself your ally.” The overwhelming majority of responses to Stoltenberg’s posts were negative, however.
“And the relationship between a mutual defense military alliance with the rights of certain minorities is…?” one X user wondered. Others brought up the bloc’s offensive wars against Yugoslavia (1999) and Libya (2011), and the fact that it spent 20 years in Afghanistan helping the US to “replace the Taliban with the Taliban.” “You just made me support Russia a bit more,” read another response, while someone else wondered whether the Russians had somehow managed to hack Stoltenberg’s account. Another social media user accused him of “pinkwashing war crimes and warmongering,” using a term that describes individuals or organizations who embrace the LGBTQ agenda to deflect attention from their bad behavior.
IDAHOBIT was conceived in 2004 by a French gay activist. Organizations such as the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA), the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the World Congress of LGBT Jews and the Coalition of African Lesbians endorsed the project, leading to the first celebration in 2005. May 17 was chosen as the date, commemorating the removal of homosexuality from the international classification of diseases by the WHO in 1990. “Transphobia” was added to the name in 2009, followed by “biphobia” in 2015, resulting in the acronym in its current form.
“They are shelling the city center, in residential areas. And I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a buffer zone..”
• Russia Won’t Accept Any Ultimatums on Ukraine – Putin (Sp.)
Russia wants to understand whom it can trust before engaging with partners on the Ukrainian conflict, President Vladimir Putin said during a trip to China on Friday. “We must understand with whom and how we can engage and whom and to what degree we can trust. We are of course analyzing everything that is going on,” Putin told a press conference in Harbin. The president pointed to China as a stakeholder that was sincerely trying to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine. “We believe that China is sincere about its efforts to solve this problem. It has suggested different options and has been very flexible about it,” Putin said. Commenting on the Swiss initiative on Ukrainian peace, the Russian president stressed that Moscow would not accept ultimatums. “It is clear what this event is all about: bringing together as many countries as possible to claim that they have everything agreed on and then giving Russia an ultimatum,” Putin said, adding he would not have it.
Russia is keeping tabs on the preparations for the Swiss conference on Ukraine, which is due on June 15-16, the president said. “We are of course analyzing everything happening in this regard. We are watching everything that has to do with the planned meeting in Switzerland,” he confirmed. Putin suggested that Ukraine and its donors were trying to force Kiev’s vision of a peace deal on Russia but warned that such attempts were doomed to fail. “First they tried to deal a strategic defeat but failed. Any attempt to force [Russia’s] hand will have the same result,” the president warned. Russia will accept an invitation to peace negotiations as agreed in Istanbul in 2022, Putin said “We have a framework for negotiating process, which is what we agreed on in Istanbul … The head of the Ukrainian delegation signed up to that long document. He initialed it. We have a document with his signature on it,” the president said.
[..] Russia is ready to participate in peace talks on Ukraine, but it is not invited to the conference in Switzerland, Putin added.”They do not invite us. Moreover, they say that they do not see us there,” Putin said at a press conference following his visit to China. Russia not going to discuss something it does not know about, but any attempts to impose on Russia its terms for settlement in Ukraine will end in same way as attempt to inflict strategic defeat, Putin said, adding that even Kiev sees that it is unable to inflict strategic defeat on Russia. Russia will be forced to create a buffer zone because of shelling by Ukrainian armed forces of residential neighborhoods in the the Russian city of Belgorod, Vladimir Putin stressed. “They are shelling the city center, in residential areas. And I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a buffer zone,” Putin said. Russia’s Belgorod Region, bordering Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkov regions, has been targeted repeatedly by the Ukrainian military, including in drone attacks.
A formal request for WWIII.
• Ukraine Formally Asks NATO To Send Troops For First Time (ZH)
The continued inevitable and disastrous slide into a WW3 nuclear-armed confrontation between Russian and the West continues as The New York Times reports NATO appears to actually be seriously mulling sending troops to Ukraine to serve in the role as ‘trainers’ at a moment Kiev is desperate to tap and train up new manpower. And this would be closer to front line positions as well. “NATO allies are inching closer to sending troops into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, a move that would be another blurring of a previous red line and could draw the United States and Europe more directly into the war,” NY Times wrote Thursday. What has changed? The Zelensky government is now directly requesting it, apparently on a formal level for the first time of the conflict, according to officials. The Times confirms “Ukrainian officials have asked their American and NATO counterparts to help train 150,000 new recruits closer to the front line for faster deployment.”
The report assures that at this moment anyway, the US is still saying ‘no’; however chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr has said an eventual deployment of trainers inside Ukraine looks inevitable. “We’ll get there eventually, over time,” he said. The Joint Chiefs chairman said this while admitting in the next breath that US and NATO trainers positioned in Ukraine would essentially be sitting ducks under the bombs of superior Russian airpower: For now, he said, an effort inside Ukraine would put “a bunch of NATO trainers at risk” and would most likely mean deciding whether to use precious air defenses to protect the trainers instead of critical Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield. General Brown briefed reporters on his plane en route to a NATO meeting in Brussels.
The report was published the same day that Ukraine’s President Zelensky in his nightly address issued a desperate appeal to Western allies saying that “Russia is trying to expand the war” and that “we must force Russia to a real, just peace by all means.” Earlier in the week Zelensky abruptly announced that he has canceled all scheduled trips abroad as the crisis in Kharkiv is worsening due to Moscow’s expanded cross-border offensive which seeks to push front lines significantly deeper into Ukrainian territory, where the Kremlin wants to see a buffer zone in order to protect its Belgorod region from shelling. While there have long been indicators (including a leaked Pentagon file) that up to dozens of special forces troops from various Western countries are likely already on the ground in Ukraine, sending NATO trainers would certainly mark a colossal escalation. Already Russian forces have been actively targeting storehouses with Western weapons, and Putin himself has vowed to make West-supplied tanks and equipment “burn”.
“..with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up.”
• Desperate Ukraine Launches Mass Kamikaze Drone Attack On Black Sea Coast (ZH)
In defiance of repeated warnings from the Biden administration, the Ukrainian military continues ramping up kamikaze drone attacks on the Russian energy complex, a move to crush the nation’s crude oil and crude product export revenues and curtail Moscow’s ability to fund President Putin’s ‘special operation’ in Ukraine. A fire broke out overnight at Rosneft PJSC’s large Tuapse refinery on the Black Sea. According to Bloomberg, this wave of overnight drone attacks is one of the largest by Ukraine in the multi-year war. The Tuapse refinery is the only refinery in Russia located on the Black Sea. It produces naphtha, fuel oil, vacuum gas oil, and high-sulfur diesel, which it exports to Turkey, China, Malaysia, and Singapore. The refinery has a capacity of about 240,000 barrels per day and was processing approximately 180,000 barrels per day shortly before the first drone attack in January took the plant offline.
With Ukraine losing ground with Russia, drone attacks by Kyiv’s military and or special operations personnel, likely with help from US intel operators, are stepping up attacks on Russia’s energy complex. Russia said it intercepted 51 drones over Crimea in the attack early Friday. Another four dozen above the southern Krasnodar region, six over the Belgorod region, and one in the Kursk region. The Defense Ministry in Moscow wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian naval drones were also destroyed. The regional government in Krasnodar Krai wrote on Telegram that the refinery fire was extinguished three hours after the strike.
[..] In mid-April, Reuters estimated that Russia’s refining capacity, which was offline due to drone attacks, was around 660,000 barrels per day, compared to 907,000 bpd offline at the end of March. Russia has stated it can repair damaged refineries over the next few months. Last week, Foreign Affairs magazine writer Sam Winter-Levy penned a note titled “Why Ukraine Should Keep Striking Russian Oil Refineries,” explaining that “with less domestic refining capacity, Russia will be forced to export more of its crude oil, not less, pushing global prices down rather than up.” In markets, Brent crude prices are marginally higher, above $83 a barrel. The Tuapse refinery attack, plus others in recent months, are reminders of the mounting geopolitical risks that could send oil prices much higher.
“America is likely living her last years. Perhaps this is why Putin and Xi don’t bother to dispose of us.”
• The West Has an Illiterate Financial Press (Paul Craig Roberts)
The entire financial press has zero understanding of basic economics. The financial “journalists” just print press releases. The US debt has never mattered, because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. That means US debt is the reserves of the world’s central banks. If US debt rises, so does the reserves of the world banking system. All central banks were delighted to accumulate more US Treasury debt as it meant the reserves of their banking system went up. The Federal Reserve can always redeem US Treasury debt by creating money with which to buy it. The debt is always redeemable because it is denominated in dollars. The problem arrives when the dollar is deserted as world reserve currency. The morons who comprise the Biden regime are scaring central banks away from the dollar as their reserves because of sanctions against Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela, and others.
The slow mental processes of central banks are beginning to understand that having your reserves in US Treasury dollar debt means they can be frozen, seized, denied to your use if you cross Washington. The threat to Washington is, whereas the Fed can print dollars to redeem the debt, the Fed cannot print foreign currencies to redeem the US dollar. So, if central banks shift their reserves out of dollars into gold, as Russia and China are doing, or into other currencies, the supply of dollars in foreign exchange markets have fewer and fewer takers. Consequently the dollar loses its value relative to gold, silver, and rising currencies, and the dollar’s value falls in foreign exchange markets. As America’s manufacturing is offshored and as America relies on imports of food, US inflation rises. Historically, the Fed’s response to inflation has been unemployment.
The Federal Reserve and the institutions used to suppress gold and silver prices use naked shorts to control the price by dumping shorts into the futures market. In other words, contracts unsupported by actual gold holdings can be used to increase the paper supply of gold in futures markets. As the futures market settles in cash, not in gold deliveries, a flood of paper contracts unsupported by actual physical gold can be used to suppress the price. In other words, the supply of paper gold can be printed just like the Fed can print paper money. Myself and Dave Krantzler have explained this over and over on my website.
This price control process fails when the demand for gold exceeds the physical supply at the suppressed price. We have recently witnessed a new outbreak in the gold price. Is this a sign that the controlled price can no longer hold against the demand for physical gold, or is there some other explanation? As the fools ruling the US continue their destruction of the country, the dollar and living standards will die with the country. America is likely living her last years. Perhaps this is why Putin and Xi don’t bother to dispose of us.
“..Mr. President, just to be technical about it, it wasn’t at 9% when you assumed office, it was 1.4%..”
• Chief Economic Adviser Refuses To Admit Biden Is LYING About Inflation (MN)
Joe Biden’s chief economic advisor refused to admit Thursday that the president keeps telling a huge lie by claiming that inflation was at 9 percent when he took office when it was really at 1.4 percent and shot up to 9 percent under Biden himself. During an interview on Fox Business, host Neil Cavuto grilled Jared Bernstein, and told him directly “you’re lying,” and “just as bad” as Biden when he tried to dodge the matter. After Biden took office inflation surged to rates unseen since the early 1980s, peaking at an annual rate of 9.1 percent in June 2022, a full 17 months after he became president. Yet, he keeps claiming it was ALREADY at 9 percent and that he inherited a weakened economy from Trump.
CAVUTO: Why does Biden keep claiming inflation was 9% when he took office — when it was actually 1.4%?
BERNSTEIN: "The president talked about how concerned he was for households struggling with prices."
CAVUTO: "That's not what I asked you. Why does he keep misrepresenting… pic.twitter.com/lMaKNfeSOV
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 16, 2024
“Jared, why does he keep saying that?” Cavuto asked, following up “You’re the head of the Council of Economic Advisers. Do you ever whisper in his ear, ‘Mr. President, just to be technical about it, it wasn’t at 9% when you assumed office, it was 1.4%. It got as high as 9% in 2022, you brought it down from that, but it was never ever ever 9% when you came into office.’ So why does he keep saying it?” Bernstein responded “Well, first of all, let me point out that in that very quote you played, the president talked about how concerned he was, uh, for households struggling with prices that he consistently—” “That’s not what I asked you. That’s not what I asked you,” Cavuto interjected, again asking “Why does he keep misrepresenting this?” “He’s making the point, uh, that that factors that caused inflation to climb to 9% were in place when he took office,” Bernstein claimed. Credit to Cavuto, he was having none of it. “No, that’s not what he said! He said it was at 9%… So if I can’t trust him with quoting data in real-time, why should I believe what he’s talking about now?”
“No it wasn’t — it was not at that! You’re almost as bad as he is,” Cavuto further charged when Bernstein attempted to claim that the annual inflation in 2021 was “about 9 percent.” “Why can’t you just say, ‘It was high, it got as high as 9%’ — you’d be accurate in saying that — And we have now brought it down, or were struggling around the 3% area, but it’s better than it was,’” Cavuto continued. “But instead to hang it on his predecessor that you inherited something that was through the roof when we were in the middle of Covid, it just seems to the American people whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat — you’re lying!” The host concluded. Biden really seems to believe that he has rescued the economy, when in reality he’s overseen an unmitigated disaster.
John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act — a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
• The Heroism of David McBride (John Kiriakou)
Sometimes a whistleblower does everything right. He or she makes a revelation that is clearly in the public interest. The revelation is clearly a violation of the law. And then he or she is even more clearly abused by the government. It would be great if these stories always had happy endings. Unfortunately, they don’t. In this case, the whistleblower, the hero, Australian David McBride has been sentenced to five years and eight months in prison for telling the truth. He will not be eligible for parole for 27 months. David McBride is former British Army officer and a lawyer with the Australian Special Forces who blew the whistle on war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, specifically the killing of 39 unarmed Afghan prisoners, farmers, and civilians in 2012. After failing to raise a response through official channels, McBride shared the information with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which published a series of major reports based on the material.
The ABC broadcasts in 2017 led to a major inquiry that upheld many of the allegations. Despite this, the ABC and its journalists themselves came under threat of prosecution for their work on the story. The ABC offices in Sydney were raided by the national police, but in the end the government did not prosecute an ABC journalist because it was not in the public interest. McBride himself, however, was prosecuted for dissemination of official information. Let’s go back a few years. McBride at the time already was a seasoned attorney. After studying for a second law degree at Oxford University, he joined the British military and eventually moved back to Australia where he became a lawyer in the Australian Defence Forces (ADF). In that role he had two tours in Afghanistan in 2011 and 2013. While on deployment, McBride became critical of the terms of engagement and other regulations that soldiers were working under, which he felt were endangering military personnel for the sake of political imperatives determined elsewhere.
By 2014 McBride had compiled a dossier into profound command failings that saw examples of potential war crimes in Afghanistan overlooked and other soldiers wrongly accused. His internal complaints were suppressed and ignored. McBride’s reports also looked at other matters, including the military’s handling of sexual abuse allegations. After his use of internal channels had proven ineffective, McBride gave his report to the police. And eventually, he contacted journalists at ABC. ABC’s Afghan Files documented several incidents of Australian soldiers killing unarmed civilians, including children, and questioned the prevalent “warrior culture” in the special forces. Subsequent to McBride’s disclosures, the behavior of other Coalition Special Forces in Afghanistan also came under sustained investigation.
In many ways, McBride’s reports went further than the issues identified by ABC. Amid prevalent rumors that Australian troops were responsible for war crimes, questionable deaths in Afghanistan had led to calls for investigations. In November 2020, the Brereton report (formally called the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force Afghan Inquiry report) was published, utterly vindicating McBride and the ABC. Judge Paul Brereton found evidence of multiple incidents involving Australian personnel that had led to 39 deaths. Among his recommendations were the investigation of these incidents for possible future criminal charges. There would be almost no criminal charges, however. At least, there would be only one eventual criminal charge against one single soldier in the murder of Afghan civilians. There have been no charges against the officers who covered up the war crimes. Instead, though, there would be serious charges against McBride for “theft of government property” (the information) and for “sharing with members of the press documents classified as secret.” He faced life in prison.
[..] First, just like in the United States, there are no protections for national security whistleblowers. McBride took his career — indeed, his life — into his hands when he decided to go public with his revelations. But what else could he do? Second, as in the United States, there is no affirmative defense. McBride, like Edward Snowden, Jeffrey Sterling, Daniel Hale and like me, was forbidden from standing up in court and saying, “Yes, I gave the information to the media because I witnessed a war crime or a crime against humanity. What I did was in the public interest.” Those words are never permitted to be spoken in a court in the United States or Australia.
Not quite yet.
• Vitalik Buterin Says OpenAI’s GPT-4 Has Passed The Turing Test (CT)
OpenAI’s GPT-4, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model, has passed the Turing test, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The Turing test is a nebulous benchmark for AI systems purported to determine how human-like a conversational model is. The term was coined on account of famed mathematician Alan Turing who proposed the test in 1950. According to Turing, at the time, an AI system capable of generating text that fools humans into thinking they’re having a conversation with another human would demonstrate the capacity for “thought.” Nearly 75 years later, the person largely credited with conceiving the world’s second most popular cryptocurrency has interpreted recent preprint research out of the University of California San Diego as indicating that a production model has finally passed the Turing test. Researchers at the University of California San Diego recently published a preprint paper titled “People cannot distinguish GPT-4 from a human in a Turing test.”
In it, they had approximately 500 human test subjects interact with humans and AI models in a blind test to determine whether they could figure out which was which. According to the research, humans mistakenly determined that GPT-4 was a “human” 56% of the time. This means that a machine fooled humans into thinking it was one of them more often than not. According to Buterin, an AI system capable of fooling more than half of the humans it interacts with qualifies as passing the Turing test. Buterin added: “It means people’s ability to tell if it’s a human or a bot is basically a coin flip!” Buterin qualified his statement by saying, “Ok not quite, because humans get guessed as humans 66% of the time vs 54% for bots, but a 12% difference is tiny; in any real-world setting that basically counts as passing.”
He also later added, in response to commentary on his original cast, that the Turing test is “by far the single most famous socially accepted milestone for ‘AI is serious shit now’. So it’s good to remind ourselves that the milestone has now been crossed.” Artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the Turing test are not necessarily related, despite the two terminologies often being conflated. Turing formulated his test based on his mathematical acumen and predicted a scenario where AI could fool humans into thinking it was one of them through conversation. It bears mention that the Turing test is an ephemeral construct with no true benchmark or technical basis. There is no scientific consensus as to whether machines are capable of “thought” as living organisms are or as to how such a feat would be measured. Simply put, AGI or an AI’s ability to “think” isn’t currently measurable or defined by the scientific or engineering communities. Turing made his conceptual predictions long before the advent of token-based artificial intelligence systems and the onset of generative adversarial networks, the precursor to today’s generative AI systems.
Complicating matters further is the idea of AGI, which is often associated with the Turing test. In scientific parlance, a “general intelligence” is one that should be capable of any intelligence-based feat. This precludes humans, as no person has shown “general” capabilities across the spectrum of human intellectual endeavor. Thus, it follows that an “artificial general intelligence” would feature thought capabilities far beyond that of any known human.That being said, it’s clear that GPT-4 doesn’t fit the bill of true “general intelligence” in the strictly scientific sense. However, that hasn’t stopped denizens of the AI community from using the term “AGI” to indicate any AI system capable of fooling a significant number of humans. In the current culture, it’s typical to see terms and phrases such as “AGI,” “humanlike,” and “passes the Turing test” to refer to any AI system that outputs content comparable to the content produced by humans.
Baby deer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1791466364151980517
Problem solving
Animals learn from each other, but sometimes they invent new ways to problem solving.pic.twitter.com/RL8VDlHjEQ
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 17, 2024
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