Feb 292024
 
 February 29, 2024  Posted by at 10:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Paul Gauguin A Day of No Gods 1894

 

Illinois Judge Rules Trump Disqualified From Ballot (ET)
Trump Asks Judge to Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels (ET)
EU Leaders ‘Scared To Death’ By Trump – Biden (RT)
Follow the McCaskill Rule on the Biden’s Use of False Story (Turley)
Biden Needs Legal Authority From Congress to Act on Russian Assets – White House (Sp.)
Hunter Biden Planned Global Hedge Fund to Benefit Joe (Sp.)
Joe Biden ‘The Closer’ In Hunter’s Corrupt Schemes (Fox)
The Obamas are RUNNING the Country (VDH)
Israel, Hamas Contradict Biden Claim That Gaza Ceasefire Is Close (Sneineh)
Ukraine In ‘Catastrophic Situation’ – Zakharova (RT)
Media’s Selective Coverage Of Navalny and Lira (Macleod)
The October 7th America Has Forgotten (Mazzarino)
China’s Unexpected Gains From The Red Sea Crisis (Cradle)
Explosive Truth of US’ Nord Stream Sabotage Could ‘Destroy’ NATO (Sp.)
Elon Musk Slams US-Mexico Border Security (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763001928554860831

 

 

Tom Fitton: In a massive loss for Biden regime/Jack Smith and the rabid anti-Trump DC courts, Supreme Court GRANTS Trump request to pause proceedings so it can decide whether a former president can be prosecuted for official acts:

The application for a stay presented to The Chief Justice is referred by him to the Court. The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

The case will be set for oral argument during the week of April 22, 2024. Petitioner’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support or in support of neither party, are to be filed on or before Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Respondent’s brief on the merits, and any amicus curiae briefs in support, are to be filed on or before Monday, April 8, 2024. The reply brief, if any, is to be filed on or before 5 p.m., Monday, April 15, 2024.

 

 

Turley: “The order setting argument on immunity for April 22 is a blow to Smith on the calendar. Rather than granting a stay, it has constructively created such a stay by scheduling the argument. Keep in mind, even if Smith prevails, pre-trial work must wait for the return of the mandate..”

 

 

Star witness

 

 

KJP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!”

Illinois Judge Rules Trump Disqualified From Ballot (ET)

Ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on whether former President Donald Trump can be disqualified as a candidate by individual states under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, an Illinois judge ruled President Trump ineligible for the ballot. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Porter, following other jurisdictions, stayed her order to remove the former president pending an appeal. The ruling came a week after the judge heard arguments regarding Illinois statutes. “This Order is stayed until March 1, 2024 in anticipation of an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, or the Illinois Supreme Court. This Order is further stayed if the United States Supreme Court in Anderson v. Griswold enters a decision inconsistent with this Order,” the ruling reads.

On Feb. 8, the day the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding Colorado’s disqualification of President Trump, mail-in ballots were sent out in Illinois with President Trump’s name on them. This puts the state in a position to potentially have to not count votes cast for him. If the order is not stayed and reversed, the state elections board will be tasked with removing “Donald J. Trump from the ballot for the General Primary Election on March 19, 2024, or cause any votes cast for him to be suppressed, according to the procedures within their administrative authority.” Much of the judge’s opinion and order dealt with state law and whether the state elections board had the jurisdiction to rule on this matter. The judge found that Illinois law allowed petitioners to bring this kind of a challenge and that President Trump was “disqualified by engaging in insurrection,” noting that this finding was echoed by the hearing officer of the state election board and the Colorado Supreme Court.

“This Court shares the Colorado Supreme Court’s sentiments that did not reach its conclusions lightly. This Court also realizes the magnitude of this decision and it (sic) impact on the upcoming primary Illinois elections,” the order reads. Both of those jurisdictions based the “insurrection” conclusion on records that plaintiffs presented drawn largely from the controversial Jan. 6 Select Committee report. Judge Porter determined that Section 3 was self-executing, applied to presidents, and could be applied by individual states even in the event of a national election. These legal issues are all currently before the Supreme Court, which on Feb. 8 questioned attorneys representing President Trump and six petitioners from Colorado on the ramifications of states applying Section 3 at length and spent little time discussing whether an insurrection occurred.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to the decision by highlighting that the judge was acting against the decision of the state’s board of elections and other relevant rulings, and called Judge Porter an “activist Democrat judge.” “The Soros-funded Democrat front-groups continue to attempt to interfere in the election and deny President Trump his rightful place on the ballot,” he said. “Today, an activist Democrat judge in Illinois summarily overruled the state’s board of elections and contradicted earlier decisions from dozens of other state and federal jurisdictions. “This is an unconstitutional ruling that we will quickly appeal,” he added. “In the meantime, President Trump remains on the Illinois ballot, is dominating the polls, and will Make America Great Again!”

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“The judge in President Trump’s civil fraud trial said that Mr. Cohen’s testimony was “significantly compromised..” “Arthur Engoron, who fined President Trump $355 million for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get better loan terms, said he found Mr. Cohen’s testimony “credible.”

Trump Asks Judge to Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels (ET)

Former President Donald Trump has asked the judge in his so-called “hush money” case to issue pretrial rulings that would block certain evidence and witness testimony that the former president says his opponents want to exploit to undermine his 2024 presidential campaign. The case centers on allegations that President Trump falsified business records to hide $130,000 in payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) in exchange for keeping quiet about her allegations about an affair. President Trump has repeatedly denied any affair or wrongdoing, while calling the case a politically-motivated ploy to hurt his chances of winning the race for the White House.

With trial scheduled to start on March 25, President Trump is now ramping up his rhetoric, accusing prosecutors in a 47-page motion filed on Monday of planning to put forward “improper arguments” and “inadmissible evidence” in order to bolster their “listless ‘zombie’ case” and interfere in the upcoming presidential election. At the top of the list of what President Trump wants New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to block is any new testimony from his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who has admitted to lying to Congress. Other demands include blocking testimony from Ms. Clifford, former Trump doorman Dino Sajudin, and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, as well as other requests related to evidentiary and procedural matters. President Trump’s motion challenges the credibility of the witnesses, including calling Mr. Cohen a “liar” and suggesting Ms. Clifford would offer “false” testimony.

“The People should be precluded from suborning additional perjury by Michael Cohen,” President Trump’ attorney, Todd Blanche, wrote in the filing. He said Mr. Cohen lied to lawmakers in 2017 and, more recently, perjured himself while testifying at President Trump civil fraud trial in October. The judge in President Trump’s civil fraud trial said that Mr. Cohen’s testimony was “significantly compromised” by his misleading statements to Congress and by some “seeming contradictions” in what he said at trial. Still, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who fined President Trump $355 million for supposedly inflating the value of his properties to get better loan terms, said he found Mr. Cohen’s testimony “credible.” Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing that prosecutors have an obligation to ensure that testimony presented to judges and juries is truthful. He argued that it was a “troubling” violation of prosecutors’ ethical and constitutional obligations for them to push for testimony from Mr. Cohen, whom he called a “serial liar.”

President Trump’s attorney also asked the judge to issue a pretrial ruling that would render as inadmissible testimony from Ms. Clifford. “The People should be precluded from offering testimony from or regarding Stephanie Clifford, who has made clear through public statements that she intends to offer false, salacious, and unduly prejudicial testimony relating to President Trump,” Mr. Blanche wrote in the filing. Ms. Clifford wrote a tell-all memoir that included salacious details of her alleged tryst with the former president at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, California, in 2006. She then promoted the book in a series of media interviews and talk show appearances, in which she claimed she was pressured to sign a non-disclosure agreement in return for $130,000 in hush money payments. Ms. Clifford has also expressed enthusiasm to take the stand against President Trump.

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“You got to pay your bills,” Trump recalled telling the unnamed ally..”

EU Leaders ‘Scared To Death’ By Trump – Biden (RT)

US President Joe Biden has criticized his predecessor Donald Trump’s comments on NATO as “absolutely bizarre,” after the Republican frontrunner said Washington should not defend its European allies who refuse to fulfill their military spending commitments. President Biden slammed his Republican rival during a “surprise” guest appearance on NBC’s ‘Late Night with Seth Meyers’ on Monday, insisting that Trump’s idea that the US is not obliged to protect its allies was “totally against our interest.” “I’ve known every major foreign leader for the longest time, and I know all these guys extremely well. They’re scared to death. What it means for them, for them, what it means if we walk away.” Biden said. “It is just outrageous what he is talking about.”

Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail was in line with his NATO-skeptic stance during his term in the White House. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina earlier this month, Trump recalled an encounter in which he supposedly told a European leader that unless that nation met the spending threshold, the US would consider it “delinquent” and not defend it in the event of a Russian attack. “In fact I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills,” Trump recalled telling the unnamed ally. Facing criticism for this “dangerous” and “un-American” stance, Trump doubled down with his verbal attack on low-spending members of the military bloc, arguing that the rest of NATO needs to send at least as much aid to Ukraine as the US does.

Trump also called on his loyalists in the US legislature to oppose any future assistance for Ukraine unless it includes a means to recoup the money. “They want to give them $60 billion more,” Trump said. “Why should you just hand it over to them? Do it as the form of a loan… If they can make it, they pay us back.” With Sweden clearing the final hurdle for accession this week, the trans-Atlantic alliance now has 32 member states, only two of which are located in North America. The organization recommends that each country spend at least 2% of GDP on military purposes, but even the wealthiest members such as Germany, France and Italy, have failed to meet the target for decades. However, smaller EU nations did ramp up their military spending during Trump’s presidency, something he has claimed as a personal diplomatic achievement.

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“Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, “suggested that it’s actually Trump, not President Biden, who seems to be showing signs of mental decline.”

Follow the McCaskill Rule on the Biden’s Use of False Story (Turley)

We recently discussed the call by MSNBC contributor and former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill for the media to stop fact checking Joe Biden before the election. Some in the media appear to have gotten the McCaskill memo in running the false story repeated by Biden in his interview this week on NBC. What is particularly striking is that the President is again being accused of spreading disinformation, the very basis used by his Administration to censor critics and groups. His Administration even pushed LinkedIn to bar those who have spread disinformation. President Joe Biden’s interview on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” has produced the usual diametrically opposite reviews. On the left, he was witty, spontaneous, and fun. On the right, he was wooden, scripted, and feeble. However, there is a new controversy over the President repeating a debunked claim that his leading opponent, Donald Trump, cannot remember the name of his wife. He was not alone.

The usual media outlets repeated the false claim and then refused to correct their false stories. It follows a familiar pattern of media adopting the most absurd interpretation of remarks while ignoring the obvious meaning. President Biden has long been challenged over false statements that range from accusing mounted border agents of whipping migrants to claiming that his son died in Iraq to embellishing his own history. He was recently called out for falsely accusing Special Counsel Robert Hur for raising his son’s death. It was the President who raised the death. What is striking about this incidence is that the falsity of this story was immediately called out and some in the media had the integrity to identify it as disinformation. Yet, it did not matter to Biden or his staff. The interview seemed highly scripted and it appeared that the questions were given to Biden in advance by NBC (as demonstrated by Biden holding his aviator glasses in anticipation of a line from Meyers as a prop). If so, it appears that his staff also did not care that the story was untrue.

Biden is trying to control the damage after a special counsel cited his diminished faculties as a reason for not indicting him. On the show, this issue of the President’s age was gently raised and Biden responded: “Well, a couple things. Number one, you got to take a look at the other guy. He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name!” It was a reference to the claim that Trump called his wife Melania “Mercedes” during the keynote speech at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) event. However, many pointed out that he was addressing Mercedes Schlapp, the wife of CPAC founder Matt Schlapp. The usual suspects spread the false claim such as Independent, Metro, and other sites as well as many on social media. Some liberal sites joyfully reported the false statement, opining “calling your wife by another woman’s name in bed or anywhere else is near most always a death sentence.

Trump called his wife, on stage and in front of a room full of people, Mercedes. Maybe he just confused to two because they’re both expensive to keep up when they get older.” Even for some of the outlets, the fact that it was untrue was only mentioned in passing while seemingly praising Biden for going on the attack on Trump. Salon ran an article entitled “He can’t remember his wife’s name!”: Biden turns the tables on Trump over age attacks, it then buried the fact that he was referring to Schlapp deep in the column. “Turning the tables” was using something that his own administration would consider malicious disinformation. Forbes said the President “flipped the script” on Trump with the attack. The usual experts came forward to issue medical judgments. Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, “suggested that it’s actually Trump, not President Biden, who seems to be showing signs of mental decline.”

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Doesn’t stop him from starting wars either.

Biden Needs Legal Authority From Congress to Act on Russian Assets – WH (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden requires legal authority from Congress to take action on frozen Russian assets, White House National Security Communications adviser John Kirby said on Tuesday. “I want to make a couple of things clear. Number one, we still need more legislative authorities from Congress for the President to be able to act on that [unlocking assets],” Kirby said during a press briefing. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier in the day that the Group of Seven countries should work together to explore different approaches to utilizing frozen Russian assets, including seizing and using them as collateral to borrow on global markets. Russia said it would view any move to seize or use its frozen assets as an “escalation of economic aggression” and would respond harshly.

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“The younger Biden proposed a list of billionaire investors for the new venture, including tycoons from China, Spain, Kazakhstan, Russia, South America, Africa and the Middle East.”

Hunter Biden Planned Global Hedge Fund to Benefit Joe (Sp.)

US president Joe Biden’s son Hunter plotted to set up a shadowy fund to cash in on his influence — so says a former business partner. Independent US media outlet Just the News has obtained a recent statement by Hunter Biden’s business associate Jason Galanis to the House impeachment inquiry.He said Hunter and his business buddies planned to build a global hedge fund with Joe Biden as its “central asset.” “The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis told the House impeachment investigators. “Our objective was to build a diversified private equity platform, which would be anchored by a globally known Wall Street brand together with a globally known political name.” Hunter Biden sought “strategic relationships to the venture” with tycoons from all over the world, including from post-Soviet space.

Just the News quoted emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous “laptop from hell” which allegedly confirm the ambitious plan. “This is a global cooperation group that will assist each other in our respective regions in whatever manner possible,” Hunter’s other associate, Jeff Cooper, wrote in March 2014. The younger Biden proposed a list of billionaire investors for the new venture, including tycoons from China, Spain, Kazakhstan, Russia, South America, Africa and the Middle East. One of Hunter’s partners, Chinese businessman Xuejun “Henry” Zhao, showed interest in the plan based on the prospect that Joe Biden would join the venture after his vice presidential term ended. “Mr. Zhao was interested in this partnership because of the game-changing value add of the Biden family, including Joe Biden, who was to be a member of the Burnham-Harvest team post-vice presidency, providing political access in the United States and around the world,” Galanis said.

Galanis’s lawyer provided a draft email backing up the businessman’s testimony. “Michael, please also remind Henry [Zhao] of our conversation about a board seat for a certain relation of mine,” Hunter reportedly wrote. “Devon [Archer] and I golfed with that relation earlier last week and we discussed this very idea again and as always he remains very very keen on the opportunity.” According to Galanis, the “certain relation” was none other than Joe Biden. Even though the phrase was removed from the final email, it remained in Galanis’ records. The group’s plan to assemble a “dream team” of international billionaires and create a global Biden business empire took a serious knock when Archer and Galanis were charged and convicted of a plot to steal $43 million in tribal bonds. Hunter Biden avoided scrutiny despite “then-available documentation that we were partners, were involved in the decision making that involved illegal self-dealing, and all of us had financially benefited from these schemes,” Galanis claimed.

Galanis told House investigators that the illegal tribal bond scheme was part of a larger effort to create a financial platform for the Biden hedge fund. “In an effort to build this financial platform, I engaged in unlawful conduct. Our companies were entrusted with $11 billion of union members’ pension fund money whose trust I betrayed,” Galanis stated. “I pleaded guilty. I have had eight years in federal custody to reflect on my actions and I am profoundly sorry for my role.”

Gaetz

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“What Harvey sells at a high price is his outsized reputation —the prospect of power and influence..”

Joe Biden ‘The Closer’ In Hunter’s Corrupt Schemes (Fox)

In the hit TV series “Suits,” the lead character Harvey Specter is known as “the closer.” His underlings construct the lucrative agreements, but Harvey’s mere appearance in a room or a timely phone call always closes the deals. What Harvey sells at a high price is his outsized reputation —the prospect of power and influence. That appears to have been Joe Biden’s role in the numerous overseas schemes that netted tens of millions of dollars for his son and family. The elder Biden adopted a Specter-like modus operandi, according to evidence uncovered by the House impeachment investigation. That is, Hunter Biden solicited deals with foreign actors by selling access to his powerful dad and promises of influence. Joe would attend meetings or show up at dinners arranged with the benefactors. Sometimes he’d simply join in on a phone call. His presence signified his assent and participation, thus closing the deals.

Enormous sums of cash would immediately flow into Hunter-controlled banks accounts where the payola was funneled through a complex web of shell companies. Some of it was then distributed to Biden family members. In legal terms, the House Oversight and Judiciary committees portray Joe Biden as a witting accessory who actively aided and abetted the influence-peddling schemes by helping to sell the “Biden Brand.” Hunter associates Devon Archer and Tony Bobulinski have already testified in detail how the Bidens enriched themselves by marketing their own brand as the Washington DC power version of a Nike sports brand. The first son put it best in a WhatsApp message to his Chinese business partners when he bragged, “The Bidens are the best at doing exactly what (the) Chairman wants.”

As Harvey Specter liked to say, “It’s not bragging if it’s true.” And the Chinese knew that better than anyone. In one deal alone with the Beijing conglomerate CEFC China Energy, the Bidens hauled in $5 million. The money was wired only after Hunter sent an urgent missive armed with a thinly veiled threat, “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled.” For emphasis, Hunter then added, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”

The CEFC transaction is especially illuminating because there are coded references to Joe Biden receiving a 10 percent cut of future profits that could have reached hundreds of millions of dollars. Two of Hunter’s former partners confirmed that Joe was “the Big Guy.” The IRS whistleblowers also verified it, although they complained that Biden’s Department of Justice tried to cover it up. Recently, Bobulinski testified, “The only reason any of these transactions took place…was because Joe Biden was in high office. The Biden family business was Joe Biden, period.” Bobulinski explained that the Vice President would call or meet with Hunter’s overseas partners “to demonstrate the ‘Biden Brand’ to whoever was in that meeting, whether it was the Ukrainians, the Romanians, the Russians, Colombians, Chinese, whoever it was. That’s all he had to do.”

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X thread. “Obama’s responsible for the border. He’s responsible for the whole crime epidemic. This is what he wanted. And Biden was very useful.”

The Obamas are RUNNING the Country (VDH)

“The Obamas are RUNNING the Country,” says military historian Victor Davis Hanson. Barack Obama said he wanted to serve a third term “in my basement in my sweats.” And he’s “living his dream” using Joe Biden as a “cardboard person they cut out,” declared @VDHanson. “Obama never moved the country as left as he wanted to. He was too timid, and he felt that he wasn’t yet ready. He would hurt his legacy if he didn’t get reelected. It was too dangerous. So now, with Joe Biden, he’s living his dream.” In November 2020, Barack Obama said to Stephen Colbert:

“And I used to say, ‘You know what, if I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or a front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement with my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I would be fine with that.’” “That’s what he’s doing right now,” remarked Hanson. “The Obamas are running the country. When my point is – they want Joe Biden the way he is because he’s a construct. He’s just a cardboard person they cut out and they plopped him down in the basement, and they make him move once in a while, and then they run all of the agency. Obama’s responsible for the border. He’s responsible for the whole crime epidemic. This is what he wanted. And Biden was very useful.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762901089995587931

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“..we do not understand what the American president’s optimism is based on.”

Israel, Hamas Contradict Biden Claim That Gaza Ceasefire Is Close (Sneineh)

U.S. President Joe Biden said that he hopes a ceasefire will be reached between Israel and Hamas by next week, which would end Israel’s aggression on Gaza and secure the release of the Israelis taken captive on October 7, 2023. “Well, I hope by the beginning of the weekend, by the end of the weekend,” he told reporters. His comment came as an Israeli delegation flew for intensive talks to Qatar, which plays a mediator role along with Egypt. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close. We’re close. We’re not done yet. My hope is, by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden added while visiting an ice cream shop in New York on Monday. Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas have been going on since December, but so far, they have not borne fruit. They have been hindered by the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Saleh Aruri in January, the ground invasion of Khan Younis, and most recently, the threats to invade Rafah, where 1.4 million Palestinians are currently sheltering.

Biden also said that Israel“agreed” to end its military operations in the Gaza Strip for almost six weeks, which include the months of Ramadan that starts on March 10 and ends on April 9. “Ramadan’s coming up, and there’s been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out,” Biden said. There have been a few frameworks for a deal between Israel and Hamas that have been leaked since December. The most recent one, but yet to be confirmed by either Israeli or Hamas officials, is a temporary truce for 40 days, the release of 40 Israeli hostages, five female soldiers, and 35 civilians, in return for 400 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel’s air force will cease flights over Gaza for eight hours a day, withdraw from several areas, and allow the gradual return of Palestinians to north Gaza, except men “who are at the age of enlistment for Hamas,” Yediot Ahronoth reported. The deal involves the entry of 500 trucks of humanitarian aid daily into Gaza, 200,000 tents for displaced families, and 60,000 mobile homes. In addition, Israel agreed to an American proposal to free 15 Palestinian national figures from Israeli jails in return for the release of five Israeli soldiers.

However, Israeli and Hamas officials met Biden’s optimistic language less enthusiastically. A senior Israeli official told Yedioth Ahronoth that “we do not understand what the American president’s optimism is based on.” Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas political chief, said the movement “will not allow the enemy to use negotiations as a cover for this crime”. Previously, Hamas described the optimism of reaching a deal as “far from the truth.” Biden’s comment seems to be more about the U.S. presidential race and less about ending the Israeli assault on Gaza. His campaign is attempting to win Muslim and Arab American voters in states such as Michigan, which votes today in a Democratic primary to choose the party’s presidential candidate, and where anger over the administration’s firm support of Israel’s war on Gaza is profound.

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“.. the French leader’s statement has had the opposite effect, especially after a large number of NATO representatives publicly stated that they were in no way considering sending their own soldiers to fight for Ukraine..”

Ukraine In ‘Catastrophic Situation’ – Zakharova (RT)

The current frontline situation is “monstrous” and “catastrophic” for Kiev and nothing can save it at this stage, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview with Sputnik radio station on Monday. According to her, even promises by French President Emmanuel Macron to send Western troops into Ukraine will not be enough to change the minds of the Ukrainian people, who have started to wake up to the fact that they have been betrayed by the West. The French leader had said this at a meeting of representatives from 20 Western nations, when Paris proposed the scenario of sending Western ground forces to Ukraine. Although a consensus on the proposal was not reached during that meeting, Macron has said that, in the future, such a scenario could not be ruled out.

Zakharova suggested that Macron’s statement was an attempt to send out a “bright” and “powerful statement that would somehow inspire people in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and in the ranks of Ukrainian citizens being driven to slaughter” that the West would help them. However, according to the spokeswoman, the French leader’s statement has had the opposite effect, especially after a large number of NATO representatives publicly stated that they were in no way considering sending their own soldiers to fight for Ukraine. “The signal was exactly the opposite – that they betrayed Ukraine and will continue to use and betray it,” she said. Countries that have officially dismissed any notion of sending their troops to fight for Kiev include the UK, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Finland and Sweden, among others.

NATO’s own Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, has also shot down Macron’s statement, insisting that there are “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.” Moscow, meanwhile, has warned that a direct conflict between Russia and NATO would become “inevitable” if the members of the US-led bloc decided to deploy their forces to Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that those who have opposed the move appear to have arrived at a “sober assessment of the potential risks” and realized that such a decision would be “absolutely against the interests of those nations” and their people. Russia has repeatedly stated that it considers the Ukraine conflict to be a Washington-orchestrated proxy war against Moscow, and has repeatedly warned that by supplying increasingly sophisticated weapons to Kiev, NATO members are drawing closer to a direct confrontation.

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“Navalny was a controversial character. Earlier in his political career, he was a prominent leader in xenophobic, far-right marches. He also appeared in a political video where he described the Muslim people of the Northern Caucasus as an “infestation of cockroaches.”

Media’s Selective Coverage Of Navalny and Lira (Macleod)

MintPress conducted a quantitative analysis of the media coverage of two political figures who recently died in prison: Alexey Navalny and Gonzalo Lira. Both were controversial characters and critics of the governments that imprisoned them. Both died under suspicious circumstances (their families both maintain they were effectively murdered). And both died in the past six weeks, Navalny in February and Lira in January. A crucial difference in their stories, however, is that Navalny perished in an Arctic penal colony after being arrested in Russia (an enemy state), while Lira’s life ended in a Ukrainian prison, abandoned by the pro-Kiev government in Washington, D.C. The study compared the coverage of Navalny and Lira’s death in five leading outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, and CNN. These outlets were chosen for their reach and influence and, together, could be said to reasonably represent the corporate media spectrum as a whole.

The data was compiled using the Dow Jones Factiva news database and searches on the websites of the news organizations. This study takes no position on the matter of Navalny, Lira, or the Russia-Ukraine war. In total, the five outlets collectively ran 731 articles or segments that discussed or mentioned Navalny’s death, including 151 from the Times, 75 from the Post, 177 from ABC, 215 from Fox, and 113 from CNN. This means that each organization studied ran more than one piece per hour. This media storm stands in stark contrast to the Lira case, where the entire corporate media coverage of his death boiled down to a single Fox News article. Moreover, the article in question described him as “spreading pro-Russian propaganda” in its headline, did not inform readers that there was anything suspicious about his death, and appeared to be doing its best to justify his treatment in the body of the article. Aside from that, there was radio silence.

It is perhaps understandable that Navalny’s death was covered in much greater detail than Lira’s. Navalny was a political leader known across Russia and the world who died just weeks before the country’s presidential elections. Yet Lira was far from unknown. News anchor Tucker Carlson, for example, devoted an entire show to his imprisonment, while high-profile figures like Twitter owner Elon Musk took up his cause. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller has been repeatedly asked about Lira’s case and has failed to offer concrete answers. As an American living in Ukraine who took a pro-Russian line on the invasion, Lira built up a following of hundreds of thousands of people across his social media platforms.

As an American citizen who died while in the custody of a government that the U.S. has provided with tens of billions of dollars in aid, it could be argued that Lira’s case is particularly noteworthy for an American audience and should be given special attention. Moreover, Lira died more than one month before Navalny, meaning that the study compares more than 40 days of Lira coverage to just six days of coverage of Navalny’s death, making the disparity all the more glaring.

Alexey Navalny was a lawyer, activist and the leader of the opposition Russia of the Future Party. A fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, for many, especially in the West, he became a symbol of the struggle for human rights and democracy in Russia. In 2021, he released a documentary film alleging that Putin was building an enormous $1 billion palace on the Black Sea for himself. Navalny made many enemies and was allegedly poisoned in 2020. Although most in the West believe the Kremlin was behind the incident, this is not a commonly held view in Russia. After returning from Germany for medical treatment in January 2021, he was incarcerated. On. February 16, 2024, he died at the notorious Polar Wolf penal camp in Russia’s far north. “Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” Navalny’s wife, Yulia, said in a statement, adding, “The most important thing we can do for Alexey and for ourselves is to keep fighting more desperately and more fiercely than before.”

Western leaders are largely of the same opinion. President Joe Biden said that, while the details are still unclear, “there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did.” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said that he was “brutally murdered by the Kremlin.” That’s a fact, and that is something one should know about the true nature of Russia’s current regime,” he added. Other politicians were more cautious. “Why this hurry to accuse someone?” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) asked. “If the death is under suspicion, we must first carry out an investigation to find out why this person died,” he said. Despite Lula’s warning, Western nations are already taking action against Russia. Both the U.S. and the U.K. have announced new rounds of “major sanctions” against Moscow, although it is far from clear to what extent previous sanctions actually hurt Russia.

Although he enjoyed a good reputation in the West, in his homeland, Navalny was a controversial character. Earlier in his political career, he was a prominent leader in xenophobic, far-right marches. He also appeared in a political video where he described the Muslim people of the Northern Caucasus as an “infestation of cockroaches.” While bugs can be killed with a slipper, in the case of human infestations, “I recommend a pistol,” he said before mimicking shooting one. According to a 2023 poll, just 9% of Russians held a positive view of him, compared to 57% who disapproved of his activities.

Read more …

“..something more sinister may be at play in shaping what violence we choose to focus on and condemn, and what violence we choose to overlook.”

The October 7th America Has Forgotten (Mazzarino)

We Americans have been at war now since October 7th, 2001. That was when our military first launched air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan in response to al-Qaeda’s September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. That’s 22 years and counting. The “war on terror” that began then would forever change what it meant to be an Arab-American here at home, while ending the lives of more than 400,000 civilians — and still counting! — in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In the days after those September 11th attacks, the U.S. would enjoy the goodwill and support of countries around the world. Only in March 2003, with our invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, would much of the world begin to regard us as aggressors.

Does that sound like any other armed conflict you’ve heard about recently? What it brings to my mind is, of course, Israel’s response to the October 7th terror assault by the Islamic militant group Hamas on its border areas, which my country and much of the rest of the world roundly condemned. Many Americans now see the destruction and suffering in Gaza and Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as the crises of the day and I agree. It’s hard even to keep up with the death toll in the Palestinian territories, but you can certainly give it a college try. More than 29,000 Gazans have already been killed, more than 12,000 of them reportedly children. The scale of the loss of civilian life has been breathtaking in what are supposed to be targeted missions.

For example, in mid-February, in an ostensible attempt to free two Israeli hostages in the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where more than one million civilians are now sheltering under the worst conditions imaginable, Israeli troops killed 74 Palestinians. Between December 2023 and January 2024, four strikes there had already killed at least 95 civilians. And on and on it goes. Anyone with concerns about Israel’s response to Hamas’s bloody attacks has ground to stand on.

But if war deaths among people of color in particular are really that much of a concern to Americans, especially on the political left, then there are significant gaps in our attention. Look at what’s happening in the 85 countries where the U.S. is currently engaged in “counterterrorism” efforts of one sort or another, where we fight alongside local troops, train or equip them, and conduct intelligence operations or even air strikes, all of it in an extension of those first responses to 9/11. Ask yourself if you’ve paid attention to that lately or if you were even aware that it was still happening. Do you have any idea, for instance, that our country’s military continues to pursue its war on terror across significant parts of Africa?

Given Israel’s October 7th tragedy, my mention of that date in 2001, which marked Washington’s first military response to the worst terrorist attacks on our soil, is more than a play on words. Like Israel, the U.S. was attacked by armed Islamic extremists who sought to make gruesome spectacles of ordinary Americans. Some of them, like the Israeli families smoked out of their saferooms only to be shot, flung themselves from their office buildings in New York’s Twin Towers, essentially choosing the least awful deaths under the circumstances. Yet after decades of America’s war on terror, whose benefits have been, to say the least, questionable, our tax dollars continue to fund the longest and bloodiest response to terrorism in our history. Our own October 7th and its seemingly never-ending consequences suggest that something more sinister may be at play in shaping what violence we choose to focus on and condemn, and what violence we choose to overlook.

Read more …

“Prior to the sending of the 46th fleet of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, Beijing’s response to Ansarallah’s maritime attacks had been relatively muted.”

China’s Unexpected Gains From The Red Sea Crisis

The Gaza war’s expansion into the Red Sea has created an international maritime crisis involving a host of countries. Despite a US-led bombing campaign aimed at deterring Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned navy from carrying out missile and drone strikes in the Red Sea, the armed forces continue to ramp up attacks and now are using “submarine weapons.” As these clashes escalate dangerously, one of the world’s busiest bodies of water is rapidly militarizing. This includes the recent arrival to the Gulf of Aden of a Chinese fleet, including the guided-missile destroyer Jiaozuo, the missile frigate Xuchang, a replenishment vessel, and more than 700 troops – including dozens of special forces personnel – as part of a counter-piracy mission. Beijing has voiced its determination to help restore stability to the Red Sea.

“We should jointly uphold the security on the sea lanes of the Red Sea in accordance with the law and also respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries along the Red Sea coast, including Yemen,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized last month. As the largest trading nation in the world, China depends on the Red Sea as its “maritime lifeline.” Most of the Asian giant’s exports to Europe go through the strategic waterway, and large quantities of oil and minerals that come to Chinese ports transit the body of water. The Chinese have also invested in industrial parks along Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coasts, including the TEDA–Suez Zone in Ain Sokhna and the Chinese Industrial Park in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan City for Primary and Downstream Industries. Prior to the sending of the 46th fleet of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, Beijing’s response to Ansarallah’s maritime attacks had been relatively muted.

China has since condemned the US–UK airstrikes against Ansarallah’s military capabilities in Yemen, and refused to join the western-led naval coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG). China’s response to mounting tension and insecurity in the Red Sea is consistent with Beijing’s grander set of foreign policy strategies, which include respect for the sovereignty of nation-states and a doctrine of “non-interference.” In the Persian Gulf, China has pursued a balanced and geopolitically neutral agenda resting on a three-pronged approach: enemies of no one, allies of no one, and friends of everyone. China’s position vis-à-vis all Persian Gulf countries was best exemplified almost a year ago when Beijing brokered a surprise reconciliation agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in which it played the role of guarantor. In Yemen, although China aligns with the international community’s non-recognition of the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa, Beijing has nonetheless initiated dialogues with those officials and maintained a non-hostile stance – unlike many Arab and western states.

Overall, China tries to leverage its influence in West Asian countries to mitigate regional tensions and advance stabilizing initiatives. Its main goal is ultimately to ensure the long-term success of President Xi Jinping’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and keep trade routes free of conflict. Often labeled by the west as a “free rider,” China is accused of opportunistically benefiting from US- and European-led security efforts in the Persian Gulf and the northwestern Indian Ocean without contributing to them. But given China’s anti-piracy task force in the Gulf of Aden and its military base in Djibouti, this accusation isn’t entirely justified. Beijing’s motivations for staying out of OPG were easy to understand: first, China has no interest in bolstering US hegemony; second, joining the naval military coalition could upset its multi-vector diplomacy vis-à-vis Ansarallah and Iran; and third, the wider Arab–Islamic world and the rest of the Global South would interpret it as Chinese support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

Read more …

“The center is self-destructing and virtually now ushering in the far-right to take its place..”

Explosive Truth of US’ Nord Stream Sabotage Could ‘Destroy’ NATO (Sp.)

On Monday, Denmark became the second European country to officially close its investigation into the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. for Ukraine’s proxy war against Russia. Lazare lists a number of figures benefiting from the phenomenon, including Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. In September 2022 a series of explosions disabled both branches of the Nord Stream pipeline between Russia and Germany. Completed in 2012, for almost a decade the pipeline provided Russian natural gas to Western Europe. Although the United States expressed unease over the act of cooperation between Russia and its European allies, the Nord Stream played a crucial role in fueling German industry and providing low-cost energy throughout the continent.

Observers immediately blamed the United States for the act of industrial sabotage, pointing to US President Joe Biden’s cryptic promise to “bring an end” to the project if Russia moved to intervene in Ukraine’s attacks on the ethnically Russian Donbass region. Denmark’s inquiry indeed found the explosions were an act of “deliberate sabotage,” although Danish officials refused to investigate who bore responsibility. Investigative journalist Dan Lazare joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program on Wednesday to comment on the US ally’s report. “It’s just absolutely farcical,” said the iconoclastic author. “I don’t know how much longer this can go on. I mean, Denmark investigated, came up with a conclusion, and everybody knows it was obviously sabotage – that was obvious from the very start. And [Denmark] refrains from pointing a finger at a likely culprit.” “And the reason, of course, is the likeliest culprit – in fact, I’m 100% convinced that it is the culprit – is the United States,” he claimed. “But, Denmark, Sweden, everybody is afraid to say it. It’s extraordinary.”

Sweden, likewise a US ally, ended its own investigation into the Nord Stream disaster earlier this month, also without commenting on the culprit of the sabotage. Lazare said the United States’ guilt is obvious, but frequently ignored in order to safeguard relations between the US and Europe. That dynamic is playing to the benefit of far-right parties across the continent who are the only ones willing to openly acknowledge the US role in the act, according to Lazare. “The man or woman on the street knows perfectly well who did this, but the liberal centrist parties try to bottle it up, try to deny reality,” he explained. “Which means that the only parties talking about it [are] other parties, the populist parties on the far-right, like the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in Germany. And the AfD actually is riding this issue rather hard.” “So if the AfD is climbing in the polls they have Joe Biden to thank because Joe Biden blew the pipeline up, and everyone’s afraid to admit it,” Lazare concluded.

The Alternative for Deutschland is one of a number of rightwing forces currently enjoying increased support in the West amidst economic hardship and the political establishment’s increasingly unpopular support for Ukraine’s proxy war against Russia. Lazare lists a number of figures benefitting from the phenomenon, including Donald Trump in the US, Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. “The center is self-destructing and virtually now ushering in the far-right to take its place,” he said, claiming establishment lawmakers “are going to pay a terrible, terrible price for covering this [Nord Stream sabotage] up.” But Lazare insisted that liberal political parties are not the only institutions likely to be damaged by the explosive reality of the Nord Stream disaster. “The US engaged in an act of war against a fellow NATO member,” he claimed bluntly. “NATO members aren’t supposed to engage in war against one another. They’re supposed to guard against attacks by outsiders.”

Read more …

“..anyone, even a literal serial killer, can toss away the ID they used to get into Mexico from anywhere in the world, then claim asylum, say they have no documents and be ushered into America.”

Elon Musk Slams US-Mexico Border Security (RT)

The fact that illegal migrants can cross the US-Mexico border and claim asylum without any identification has effectively turned the US into a “refuge” for criminals, Elon Musk stated in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. His comments came in response to a recent Bloomberg article, shared by the X user EndWokeness, reporting that Venezuela is experiencing its lowest homicide rate in 22 years, now that many criminals and gangs have left as part of a massive wave of emigration prompted by economic hardship. EndWokeness commented on the report, stating “Venezuela has its lowest homicide rate in 22 years because their gangs are coming here.” Musk agreed and claimed that “the ability to discard your identification documents (from any country), walk across the southern border and claim ‘asylum’ has turned America into a refuge for the world’s worst criminals.”

In another post later that day, the billionaire doubled down on his statement, writing that “anyone, even a literal serial killer, can toss away the ID they used to get into Mexico from anywhere in the world, then claim asylum, say they have no documents and be ushered into America.” On Wednesday, the Tesla CEO also slammed a bill proposed by Democratic Senator Laphonza Butler, asking the Biden administration for more federal taxpayer money to provide beds for immigrants in San Diego after the county shelter ran out of funding. The senator warned that between 800 and 1,000 people residing in the shelter would be released per day otherwise.

“Dams are bursting all over the country,” Musk responded, noting that “America is only 4% of Earth’s population” and if just 1% of the rest of the Earth moves to the US, it would crush all of the country’s essential services. “I am ringing the alarm bell, because the flood of illegals is crushing the country,” he wrote. The state of the US-Mexico border has become one of the key issues in US politics over the past year amid a historic influx of millions of immigrants. Republican lawmakers have been demanding tighter controls and more money to be set aside to deal with the border crisis, prompting them to block a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Ukraine.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Holes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762790920200614146

 

 

Groucho

 

 

45

 

 

Friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762776196276785614

 

 

Osprey

 

 

Blue whale

 

 

Look
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762925969705189497

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Home Forums Debt Rattle February 29 2024

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 42 total)
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  • #153736

    Paul Gauguin A Day of No Gods 1894   • Illinois Judge Rules Trump Disqualified From Ballot (ET) • Trump Asks Judge to Block Testimony From Michae
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 29 2024]

    #153738
    EoinW
    Participant

    Make way for Don Rickles!

    That was rather poor Groucho. Go listen to him on You Bet Your Life. That’s vintage Groucho!

    #153739
    EoinW
    Participant

    I often wondered why Gonzalo Lira remained in Ukraine, living dangerously. I can only guess he thought his US citizenship offered him protection. You’d think he, of all people, would have remembered Charles Horman & Frank Teruggi.

    #153740
    John Day
    Participant

    Yesterday jb-hb wrote:
    “If you accept Logos, ANY prayer to alter things would be evil. Except changing yourself. Seems like that is the one exception that breaks no rules”
    Yeah, that’s my read, too.
    “Pray” for understanding and guidance, with the intention to use it to reduce suffering in the world.
    Words not required; just intention.
    You might be “Buddhist”.
    No anthropomorphic deity is required in Buddhism.
    It is a path to personally know reality better.

    #153741
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    Aaron Bushnell is America in microcosm. Self immolation with a jew standing over you with a gun to your head. RIP

    #153742
    John Day
    Participant

    Yesterday Dr. D wrote:
    “Mark Twain said, all sides are praying to God before a war? Should he intervene? ALL of you are all dead either way.
    Does it suit his purpose? His purpose is to WATCH. And find out what happens.”

    Point of Order, Sir: All of this happens within “God”, aka “Universal Consciousness”, so “God” feels burning to death from burning accelerant in front of the Israeli Embassy in DC.
    From that perspective “God” has an interest in reducing all suffering which can be reduced through “free will” choices not-to-torture and stuff.

    Carry-on…

    #153743
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Mitch McConnell – Longest Serving Senate Leader In US History – To Step Down From Position In November

    See? From my argument yesterday, there is a God. And there’s no election fraud: that’s why a senator who is less popular than Biden gets elected year after year. When people are hated and unpopular, they’re elected: That’s Democracy!

    “”Who Could Be Next”: Top Canadian Pension Fund Sells Manhattan Office Tower For $1, Sparking Firesale Panic

    Well someone finally got their brains on. Go Canada. Except they probably should have done it before now. Could sell it for $100 and make 100x more profit!

    “Goldman Says Office Tower Prices Must Plunge 50% For Housing Conversion To Make Sense

    Okay, housing for what? People who have housing need jobs.

    “• Trump Asks Judge to Block Testimony From Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels (ET)

    Epoch Times seems to forget that Daniels already lost an equal case and also had to pay stiff damages for lying?

    Like Trump, I guess I can’t stop her from continuing to make claims, but we can sue her again, which takes time. However, to bring someone proven in court who is convicted of lying, to lie AGAIN that such an event happened is noteworthy and relevant. And for Epoch to seem to forget this somewhat relevant point isn’t helping. Probably what happens when everything out there is 90% lies. You can’t keep track of order at all, everything contradicts, even in the details, and 1 or 2 lies slip through.

    That’s why you take out, discredit, and banish liars after the SECOND lie. Sorry. If you don’t, then this.

    “Trump’s idea that the US is not obliged to protect its allies was “totally against our interest.”

    This is what I mean. What allies? So meta-reality here, our purpose for existing is that we must always defend them for free? They do nothing, ever? Dude, I think that’s called “Slavery”, which Biden approves of.

    Okay, suppose they are supposed to pay. Suppose they haven’t in decades (both true). How you gonna MAKE them? By threatening you won’t be there if they don’t, duh. By not being a punk and a patsy. It’s not really a lot of money as I guarantee unlike Engoron, we wouldn’t need a lump sum of all 40 years of back pay, in a lump sum at that end of the month, but probably actually getting the +2% you promised plus some vig pretending they’re making up for past years. They won’t. They will never pay, but will F us in the A and then complain about it. And why? Because they suck so much they would collapse.

    Okay, second sideline: clearly Europe’s fears have little to do with NATO. The actions, language, say so. So what’s it really about?

    “• Biden Needs Legal Authority From Congress to Act on Russian Assets – WH (Sp.)

    Biden has just shown with student loans, he ignores Congress, the Supreme Court, and all judges. Arguably he is ignoring all laws elsewhere, as in energy or at the border. This is no surprise to most of us, but extends to prosecuting 5 (?) new wars (trying to beat out Obama?) by bombing Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, etc without notice or discussion.

    “Joe Biden ‘The Closer’ In Hunter’s Corrupt Schemes (Fox)

    Very clever. So I guess all these nations, countries, billionaires, they’re all super stupid. Biden never gave them nothing and decade after decade they kept paying. Ever higher sums to get ever more zero effect. Do I got that right? That’s your argument here?

    What is “Access”? Like hiring Rick Astley for your kid’s birthday party? No, I think you mean “Bribery”. It’s not a fan phone call to Captain Kirk. It’s that Biden will DO something. And that is called “Bribery.” It’s specifically named in the Constitution somewhere, and what we should do about it, HereLetMeGoogleThatForYou.com

    “The Obamas are RUNNING the Country (VDH)

    No he’s not, as I said before. If he did, the speeches on the teleprompter would be coherent, even if Biden isn’t. And Obama didn’t run the country when he WAS there…the CIA did, having installed his from Wall St donations and borrowing all of “W”s War cabinet. That leads to my question vs VDH as to why ISN’T Obama running the country? Where is he and what’s he doing?

    A slick competent operator like Obama would make this s—t sandwich go down much easier. We’re doing the #Opposite of that, alarming and awakening everyone.

    “Ukraine In ‘Catastrophic Situation’ – Zakharova (RT)

    I wouldn’t think so, but their actions show they are far more hollow than they’ve been pretending. I’ve often said if they break the line there’s nothing behind, but I meant like a normal country. Like – I guess the U.S. is the world’s worst example but – suppose you took San Juan and had to clean up the rest of Puerto Rico, being the only “state” not armed to the literal teeth. Like that. Bunch of civilians, policemen, remaining guard. Ukraine’s actions say there’s nobody to the Left of the contact line from there to Poland. Fine by me, Ukraine can stop dying then and like Black ‘47 maybe can recover and remain a viable people.

    “NATO’s own Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, has also shot down Macron’s statement, insisting that there are “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.”

    Because: “The West”, they are all lying. Macron JUST held the meeting for boots on the ground. Tens of Thousands of them, probably hundreds. Stolts himself said they’re attacking Russia in six years. That sounds like a Plan. So..which is it? Both. Neither. Aiiii!

    “[Navalny] was a prominent leader in xenophobic, far-right marches.”

    Yes, his job as a direct, paid agent of MI6 was “Divide and conquer” cause social division between Russia and the Muslim Caucuses, the “Long, Soft Underbelly” of Russia. When London lost that, like they lose everything, “and Then a miracle happened” and Navalny saw the light! His positioning changed to suit the times, demonstrating he has no beliefs or principles. But like other politicians, his principles changed to what was also totally unpopular and nobody wanted or supported! Yet he has money year after year from somewhere anyway! Magic!

    “Navalny was a political leader known across Russia”

    Maybe Political gadfly? Jill Stein has higher support. Most Americans don’t know who that is. To be a “leader” you have to lead something besides your 4 man home office. He lived in his mom’s basement with his wife, right? Seems like it.

    For Lira, you can see these few people floated appropriately to get him in the news, get some attention so he could leave Ukraine, as would be normal for literally everyone, as if Ukraine has the time and resources to try and imprison irrelevant foreigners right now. No pickup. Tucker brings him up internationally, everyone stops talking until the subject changes. Staring at their shoes. Right here everyone said he’s just a traitor, a protected class, knowing nothing. I guess not, eh? Will your public apology help him now? He’s a journalist, war correspondent, man on the ground as none of them are? Not a single journalist worldwide cares. Embarrassment and shame were outlawed, 2001, haven’t seen them since.

    “We Americans have been at war now since October 7th, 2001.”

    Sure, that was the Nazi coming out party, declaring world war for 100 years as McCain promised. Like the 1,000 Year Reich speech. AND WE ALL SAID SO AT THE TIME. Like: you guys plan on passing a law here anytime? You can’t declare war on an adjective. They never did and never have. And also never will. So that was the waking up party for so many, as it took something more personal like Lockdowns for many more. Ugh.

    ““The center is self-destructing and virtually now ushering in the far-right to take its place..”

    Except when the “Far Right” is “everyone to the Right of Mao”, the “Far-right” they mean is a group of antiwar, pro-gay marriage, cows-should-exist, I-like-to-eat extremists. When you’re a liar, your first victim is words. Their words have no meaning. So therefore THEY, have no meaning. You can’t trust them and can only eject them. Whatever they say, ignore them. If they say “I would like to buy this baguette”, ignore them, they are probably lying. Do this until they each die of old age.

    “On Monday, Denmark became the second European country to officially close its investigation into the explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline.”

    If you missed this, Sweden said they closed it because they have no jurisdiction or interest. Um, what? THE WHOLE REASON THEY WERE INVESTIGATING IS BECAUSE THE EXPLOSIVES WERE PLANTED ON PURPOSE IN THE ONLY LOCATION WHERE SWEDEN DID HAVE JURISDICTION. Whisky, Tango.

    There’s like ONE island on the whole route that’s anywhere NEAR Sweden, and the saboteurs put all four bombs in only that ONE spot. That’s why no one ELSE could investigate. Nope. Never happened now. #OppositeLand. I guess the bombs went off in Norway or Uruguay or something?

    Lazare said the United States’ guilt is obvious, but frequently ignored in order to safeguard relations between the US and Europe”

    Safeguard relations of the person who BOMBED you??? Um, I don’t think The PEOPLE of Europe are down with that. So therefore there are TWO Europes: One thin slice of elites who clearly approved and authorized it, and Everyone Else. What does that have to do with “Relations” with the United States? The Relations are, “They all agreed all along.” Hell, both German Service AND Poland both SAID it was about to happen, and that’s AFTER Biden was on international TV PROMISING it would happen. But “Europe” didn’t know nothin’, not only being illiterate, but deaf-mute I guess? Uh, no. “Europe” that is, the small locked up cadre of hand-installed elites, knew all along, it was their plan, and they had planned and coordinated it with the United States and London for months if not years. So it’s not like they “Suddenly found out” and “Just had to…” That’s Literally. Impossible.

    So what else is new? 1. You’re a liar. 2. You blame us for your own plans and actions. (Step 3. the people believe it)

    “illegal migrants can cross the US-Mexico border and claim asylum without any identification”

    Because when you’re a serial liar working with serial liars, words have no meanings, let’s review what a “Asylum” is. So you’re saying all 10 million are foreign journalists? All 10 million are war protesters, arrested in their home countries? All 10 million are researchers and exposers of corruption, in Ivory Coast, China, and Afghanistan, as none of them are coming from Central and South America anymore? Uh, NO. That is DEFINITIONALLY impossible. The DEFINITION of “Asylum seeker” is by definition, very, very, very, very, very small. But you give liars any loophole and they’ll dive for it like a pig on s—t and that’s why you need to say NO like 99,9999% of the time. And arrest harrass, and thrash them the rest of the time for wasting your time. BECAUSE receiving asylum is like getting a Presidential Pardon: very rare. And should be. And has to be, by definition.

    Therefore 9,999,980 of those people are NOT asylum seekers at all, and need to be arrested. Not JUST for felony entry and jumping “bail”, but for LYING to the courts and Federal register.

    Tanzania: This is what I’m talking about where You can solve world hunger, etc with nothing but a shovel. It’s literally easy, but we won’t do it. We like complaining Waaaay better. And Netflix on the couch. For the price of one jet-that-can’t-fly, or twenty windmills-that-don’t-work, you can probably green 6 counties in Arizona forever.

    Now I’ve made fun of Europe all day for years. Because they are clearly at the center, and the weakest, and America is clearly and widely reported as being the anchor, the core obstacle to globalist plans we’ve fought them non-stop for 100 years, and that if we fall, the world falls. Probably true.

    That said, the Duran was on yesterday discussing the War Bonds and I’d like to give Europe their due. The reason they, the EU (what does that mean? It has 10 meanings, all conflicting. They mean the unelected “EU Commission”) are IN this state, with no taxation and no army, slim prospects of getting either, is the EUROPE HAS BEEN FIGHTING EUROPE NON-STOP TOO. Tirelessly, faithfully, aggressively, although they are in the belly of the dragon with nothing to fight with. First, the EU itself. Took 20 years to get it even to the sorry state it was in because of non-stop opposition to their Soviet, undemocratic, elite black nobility plans. All Europe could smell it for decades, and all nations opposed it unless these parts were reformed. As Thatcher did. As reforming it would against its whole PURPOSE, they then had to make a 10,000 page weasel word leviathan than doesn’t function and no one can understand or enact. That’s its own destruction.

    Next, all Europe opposed Eurobonds. No taxing structure. Italy did as they can’t shed and devalue the Lira, and especially Germany did, not wanting to be endlessly sucked dry by the South. That never got through anywhere yet. Total win on that front. All the brush battles on that stalled, derailed, and eventually let them take the pressure and agree to a political union that had no taxing union, which means there’s no legal political union either. And they know it.

    They then fought them ALSO on the political union, always keeping a back door to exit, sovereignty in the veto-exit sense, as they too could not face the unified throne of world power and survive. But they added so much scar tissue to the work as to render it inoperable. They retain all their national functions, and only added two more layers above that add nothing, the EU Parliament and ECB.

    Speaking of, the ECB has no power, they are founded with NATIONAL gold that is BORROWED to the ECB and can be withdrawn at any time. Maybe they can’t get it, but a nation asking for it would be their end overnight. The ECB cannot Print money, the way the Fed can, but again is subservient to the State budgets. That means the ECB is royally screwed, and has been since before 1999, as Armstrong told them, and they said “We’ll figure it out (aka “shove it down their throats”) later.” They haven’t. Europe has still won against Globalists here too.

    To GET that EU, what little Ptomkin stage-sets they have, they held referendums, at times, places and conditions of their choosing, with the largest PR campaigns in the history of Europe. Then lost most of them. Germany had no law or referendum, as their founder said they’d lose 2:5 and that’s AFTER the PR blitz, leading to further stalling and discrediting, continual loss of power. Referendums held – with widespread reports of mishandling exceeding Crimea – all lost. And lost so badly they stopped having referendums, just “Making s—t up” and “Doing it anyway.” TINA. It’s inevitable. You will be assimilated. They haven’t. In fact, because of all this, Britain left. They Un-Referendum’ed, further harming them.

    To get around the peoples’ non-stop resistance, they then shoved it down their throats using a “Treaty”. While this is arguably ALSO illegal, the treaty mechanism then limited what the Nations could offer the EU. AGAIN leaving them no military or taxing power, AGAIN leaving sovereignty, which is why the people tolerated it, and “won” again. That is to say, forestalled them, did another rear-action, stymied a greater enemy, did not “lose”.

    And WHO did this? All of them. You see Germany as a people gung-ho for the Project? Greece? England? France? Hungary? Nope. Not a one. Not in 1999 at their best chance, not in 2008, not in 2014 or 2022, and certainly not now. Not a person, not a nation is for this, so who is? The Black Nobility, the billionaire class alone. The People of Europe have fought them to a standstill IN THEIR HOME STATE, right in their own CAPITAL, and with the attempt a Covid Bonds, then War Bonds, looks like they’re going to lose the f– out of this one too.

    So good on ya, Europe! I know we pick on you because you’re the weakest, least resisting, and most taken over. You’re the center of all the world’s problems and most wars right now. However, despite being on the front of Verdun for 25 years, you’re still standing, haven’t given up the ship yet!

    We’ve got our own battles and perhaps if we can prevail against these glue-sniffers, we can give you that greater headwind and help you get the upper hand over there too. Thanks.

    #153744
    zerosum
    Participant

    —————-
    Vocabulary/rhetoric enhancer, identifier, expander decoder.

    Don’t be left out of conversations by lawyers, doctors, accountants, military, professors, psychologisst, politicians, MSM, experts, suits, blue collar workers. or Trump.

    Stop looking for, “the right word”, “At the tip of your tongue”.
    Somebody went to the trouble of putting together a list of +1,400 words to help you

    WARNING:( To avoid gibberish), KEEP AWAY FROM AI.

    https://www.insult.wiki/list-of-insults
    —————

    CEASE FIRE NEGOTIATION LEAKS

    There have been a few frameworks for a deal between Israel and Hamas that have been leaked since December. The most recent one, but yet to be confirmed by either Israeli or Hamas officials, is a temporary truce for 40 days, the release of 40 Israeli hostages, five female soldiers, and 35 civilians, in return for 400 Palestinian prisoners.

    The deal involves the entry of 500 trucks of humanitarian aid daily into Gaza, 200,000 tents for displaced families, and 60,000 mobile homes. In addition, Israel agreed to an American proposal to free 15 Palestinian national figures from Israeli jails in return for the release of five Israeli soldiers.
    ————
    Beijing has voiced its determination to help restore stability to the Red Sea.

    https://thecradle.co/articles/chinas-unexpected-gains-from-the-red-sea-crisis

    China’s unexpected gains from the Red Sea crisis
    Despite Beijing’s maritime security priority, Yemen’s Red Sea ban on Israeli-linked shipping has boosted China’s regional standing while miring its US adversary in an unwinnable crisis.

    A Chinese fleet, including the guided-missile destroyer Jiaozuo, the missile frigate Xuchang, a replenishment vessel, and more than 700 troops – including dozens of special forces personnel – as part of a counter-piracy mission.

    China has since condemned the US–UK airstrikes against Ansarallah’s military capabilities in Yemen, and refused to join the western-led naval coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG).
    Giorgio Cafiero
    FEB 28, 2024
    ———-

    #153745
    John Day
    Participant

    Later yesterday jb-hb wrote:
    ‘I’ve no idea where the point of leverage was to place myself at to be a White Hat, but I surely failed to position myself there.
    “What is my mission in this life?”, “Please light the way before me for I am blind.”, “How can I serve life though weak and flawed?”
    Yes. Agreed. But I’m a fuckup. I’ll uh, do my best. It won’t be fantastic or anything.’

    You already comin’ outta dat jump-to-lightspeed, dude.
    I bow to you.
    Get a broom.

    #153746
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Eowin, Lira couldn’t leave from the get-go as part of his court case. His Ukrainian wife had already left for Amsterdam with their daughter I think. That was a minor court case, so it didn’t pop up much, but if they hold your passport for it, well, there you are. His second court case was much more serious and therefore worth running the border for. We know how they both turned out.

    Day, I don’t know, I’m not sure God has preferences about it. WE have preferences because it’s easier for US. God knows and will point out that, due to Karma, picking good over evil will be easier for US, but like a gentleman, doesn’t (usually) interfere. Maybe he’s happy if we learn something and make the right choices? Maybe? But is if We R’ Him, then if We’re happy, there is greater universal happy, which means greater God happy? Hardly like a driver of action if true.

    I guess the point is, this is all around the Vengeful God theory. God told you to do this ’cause God wants jelly donuts not creme so you better comply, mister! No. Like your Father, God will TELL you (so to speak) THIS action in THIS universe has bad results. I love you, don’t do that. — I — don’t have anything to do with it. You want me to suspend gravity over the whole universe because you want to shoot heroin and fall off an overpass? No. The answer is NO. Don’t do the thing that harms you, fool. Listen to me when I tell you what that is. — I — am not the one punishing you, not directly: physics of the known universe are. Unless you want the whole universe to cease to exist, it’s not like I can suspend them.

    EGO. I’m not going to erase all 8 billion humans, all million-trillion known live planets in a million-trillion more galaxies just to alter physics ’cause you wanna do heroin. No. Check your ego, man. You are very tiny. The world doesn’t revolve around you. It revolves around ALL of us together of which you’re one.

    But like your father, if you wanna do heroin, what’s he supposed to do? Tie you up? Why do you exist then? Did you want to NOT exist, and NOT have the option, be a God-puppet instead? I don’t think so. So he can only LET you if you choose to. And because “Rest of known universe exists” he has to let you discover the consequences, the Physics of that for yourself.

    You ASK him to intercede? Great! How? By letting you keep doing heroin but suspend all known physics concerning it? Or maybe by interceding to find the strength in yourself to NOT DO HEROIN. That is, an internal change, maybe a snip of good luck, right connection that you’re not going to screw up and piss on. Oh wait: ONE of those two prayers and wishes has a good chance of being answered, and the other doesn’t. That’s not his dispensation, it’s your request.

    We talk about the rights of the criminal, the victims, etc, the 0.01%. Sure, they have rights. But so do the other 99.99% What about THEIR rights to have a functional reality that has rules and continues to exist at all in an orderly fashion? Don’t they count too? Not to the egoist, they don’t. I want it all and bad Sky Daddy won’t give it to me. Ask to change YOURSELF, into alignment with the laws of physics, with God, and he finds no such obstacles in helping you.

    Now that’s difficult because we live in a human-oriented world. In nature a waterfall is going to waterfall if you fall into it. But in the human world a Judge might change his sentence for no reason we can see, and most daily life and luck is inside HUMANS, their choices and psychology. Which can probably be bent. So I’m less sure on influences here, ’cause clearly it seems to happen. Makes it really confusing. Did they listen to “God”, the Devil, themselves, some TV show they saw last night when they decide about something affecting you? Who knows? Unlike a more natural world where you can see the back canvas, makes it really difficult to tell, one reason “Civilized” world is historically so screwed up.

    Does God think of self-immolating? Well, he probably thinks it’s heroic or something, like a real Emmy-winning episode. Although probably on life-review they might demonstrate you could have protested with equal heart a lot more constructively. I mean it’s heroic to jump into the river (intent) but when you both die maybe you should have grabbed that life buoy instead. If you’re at a level of higher knowledge it becomes a lot easier to point at the buoy when down here we didn’t know it was there. So it’s not like binary, yes/no. They’re living with an entirely different frame of reference on everything, just as we would to primary school kids. Should a 6th grader SHOOT the bully on the playground? It IS a felony, you know. It IS a violent assault that in adult terms could be legally met with deadly force. Well, in hindsight that may have been overreacting. Probably there were many ways to solve the issue before then and without that. Same here. If I were perfect, I would already know what to do. That I don’t just demonstrates my lack of advancement and complete lack of knowledge, yet here we are.

    Buddhism — or at least the kind you mostly find in America — isn’t a Religion, it’s a Method. It’s a method to “Look and find out for yourself”. Directly. Report back: did you find what me and the others did? It changed our lives, how about yours? But no, as an empirical investigation it’s essentially the Scientific Method. Only about Consciousness, which Science won’t approach. Since it’s just Science, what’s the harm in giving it a try? If they’re wrong, you’ll prove it in no time.

    #153747
    John Day
    Participant

    All-Y’all: Look/listen from the 20:23 time mark, the last few minutes of Military Summary last night

    The proposition is that Transnistria, beset by the west this year, has asked the EU, UN, Red Cross et all for help, and Russia, too. They asked Russia, too, like Donetsk and Luhansk did…
    Transnistria is an ethnic Russian enclave that never agreed to dissolve the USSR or leave Russia. It is between “Ukraine” and Moldova, both of which are NATO-directed entities now, which just strangled trade across the Transnistrian borders, leading to the pleas for help.

    Transnistria’s capital, Tiraspol is about a 2 hour drive on a major highway from Odesa, except the border is closed at Kuchurhan. There is a gate with a guard or something. It’s a pretty straight line, otherwise.
    There is this weird anomaly of the USSR-dissolution, which leaves the largest military stockpile in Europe right there in Transnistria. It just never got sorted-out, and 1200 Russian troops stay to guard all those old T-73 tanks and heavy-artillery shells that nobody uses anymore.
    Since the gates ae closed, and nobody would give Russia the overflight clearance to fly 60,000 soldiers, including tank crews and artillery crews, to Transnistria,
    Odesa clearly CAN’T be assaulted from that direction.
    Russia, having taken out all the Patriot systems, S-300s and most of the remaining S-200s, would still not overfly Ukraine with troop-transports for a few days.
    I’m sure they wouldn’t…

    #153748
    tboc
    Participant

    does one consider there is a purpose to the black hole?
    is there flux?
    is there a steady state?

    #153749
    John Day
    Participant

    @tboc, who asked: “does one consider there is a purpose to the black hole? is there flux? is there a steady state?”

    I dunno 🙁 Epstein got to Hawking, and now he’s dead, anyway.
    We’ll never know until we die, and then we can ask Hawking, if we meet him…

    #153750
    tboc
    Participant

    purpose or function

    #153751
    tboc
    Participant

    there is one reality, however you oberve it, measure it or experience it or describe the experience

    Dr. John you have a good sense of humor, “We’ll never know until we die,”

    #153752
    Dr. D
    Participant

    I guess I’m required to comment on US Special Forces in the tunnels of Gaza.

    How about “Of Course, Duh”? Not only have we been everywhere, killing everyone since 2001, +6 Million, putting the Nazis to shame, but have really been doing it nonstop since at least 1947, or even 1847. I mean, what history do you read?

    What we most need in the world is for SOLDIERS to READ. Read history when they’re young bright eyed boys about Seneca, Cincinnatus, Pliny, etc, I mean if you love war so much read Clauswitz, Washington, Patton, Butler, even Hemingway. THEN, after you see it’s non-stop screw-ups to steal s—t, kill innocents, and make a bunch of cowardly, two-faced, lying despicable scum rich, THEN decide if you want to volunteer. If the US couldn’t recruit any soldiers to do their illegal, immoral, unconstitutional, Hague-and-Geneva violating evil self-serving dirty work, BOTH the US Military AND Congress would have to reform. Not for lack of trying, but because the American people literally will not show up to commit open, previously-known crimes. But they do. And why I’ve never known. Ask my classmates signing up, they just shrug. Wut? Wot the wut what what?

    That goes for corporations too, of course, but generally only the military is told to kill everyone they find, intentionally. Corporations do it ignorantly or accidentally. Governments kill everyone on purpose.

    So we are in the Tunnels of Gaza? OF COURSE we are. We gave them the 20,000 NEW bombs to use there, AND the $6B a year for 50 years to build the whole nation, army, and genocide out of raw, dry sand. My only question was “How much?” and not like “how much,” which is everything, but how much Directly and Openly? Like literal corporals with literal uniforms and US flags stitched on?

    We may be fighting “them”, but until this very point, so long as US men – and GOOD US men, the BEST US men — keep signing up to do Schumer’s and McConnell’s bidding, then “We” can’t stop it. Because the “We” who would stop it is THEM. Those US men who enlisted. Yeah, it ain’t great our enlistment is down, it makes us weak and self-sorts who stays in are the worst who WILL fire on every civilian, Palestinian or American alike, and gay-rape the ranks (this is happening) but unless you want to go up and start shooting, I don’t have a better option.

    ATM it’s a volunteer service. Stop volunteering to serve psychopaths. It’s not like it’s been a secret any time in the last 250 years. I refused to help, but I’m just one guy. I need your support along with me.

    Point them out, tell the truth. Stop helping.

    #153753
    zerosum
    Participant

    Read more

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/02/putins-address-to-the-federal-assembly.html#more

    Putin’s speech

    http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73585
    Vladimir Putin delivered his Address to the Federal Assembly. The ceremony took place in Gostiny Dvor, Moscow.

    February 29, 202414:20Moscow
    ————

    #153754
    those darned kids
    Participant

    “there is one reality, however you oberve it, measure it or experience it or describe the experience”

    not according to the cat..

    #153755
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr. D: Not to beat a dead horse or god, but there is an inside-outside “God” disagreement at play.
    The god you model has an independent-observer status, watching reality unfold, with an option to intervene (How? In physics, to observe is to interact and “influence”.)
    The god I model is the dreamer of all reality, and we are characters within the dream, each of us acting within the dream, with “apparent free will”, and each of us experienced by the dreamer.

    To “pray” within that context would “do the most good” if it were to seek guidance within the dream. Some people are “lucid dreamers”, who can be awake within a dream, and communicate with eye motions while their EEG is running, then tell the story of the dream and when their eyes signaled what. I had a friend in college and med school who was a lucid dreamer and engaged in this research. He was a pleasant and fun guy. He cheated on his fiancee with his therapist. I never told on him, but I encouraged him to cut it out and be true to his fiancee.
    She kind of looked down on me and didn’t know I was her friend and ally. They got married.
    That was a long time ago. I now look him up. He’s a shrink in Dallas with 1.9 stars and this review,
    “He is a quack who works in favor of insurance companies and should be charged with medical malpractice and disbarred. … The hippocratic oath means nothing to him”.
    Life is funny/odd, not making me LOL.

    #153758
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @tkd re: authoritative cat

    The cat knows any being can only experience a finite set of points on a continuum of reality. That’s why they can knock stuff of the shelves and give you the “I didn’t do it.” look. “Wasn’t me! It was Schrodinger’s cat whot dunnit!”

    You cannot see the sharpness of my blade
    You can glimpse only the vague outline of my armor
    But, sadly, these things are true for my as well.

    ———————————————————————-

    Black hole function/purpose, hmmm….interesting. On one hand, we have the heat death of the universe, entropy allowing everything to go to s#!+ in a fog of spun-down particles. On the other hand, black holes accreting a weird kind of potential energy, a reverse kinesis, where they don’t do the falling, you do. “Why did you hit my fist with your face?!?” My guess is they, too, see their deaths. But it may be something very anticlimactic, or traces of these events would be everywhere. Dark matter, maybe? Spun-down particles?

    Black hole is analogous to financial bubble, as are other celestial bodies. Entropy allows complex structures to emerge because those structures are better capable of removing energy from matter.

    #153759
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    Skidoo – full movie

    Groucho Marx plays God, a mobster gone anational, taken to the high seas with a supermodel concubine. Cast of thousands, including Carol Channing, Jackie Gleason, George Kennedy in a prison guard acid trip scene!.

    #153760
    poppie
    Participant

    Stephan Hawking theorized (that is he imagined) a way to exit black holes. He imagined that this would happen in the form of information and that information would be proven to have mass. Experimentally, the proof is not yet final that Hawking Radiation is internal or external to an event horizon. If internal, then information and its mass defies all we know about the cosmos. It leads to the possibility that god is the sum of all minds and souls and the cosmos is just a view of this panorama. I choose to believe this to be proof that god exists. And heaven. And that both are as impartial to what you do as a black hole.

    #153761
    Dr. D
    Participant

    Correct. In my concept, God observes the universe but USUALLY doesn’t intervene. As any king. Now I don’t know if that’s actually true, it may be sorta mostly true, and only very very high beings intervene from very very high state of knowledge and power. At our level it appears not to matter. Heck, a rebel sea sprite could part the Red Sea for all I know, just some rogue Puck or Peter Pan. Might do it for lols and got Posidon-arrested for 10,00 years. So at levels as low down as we are, the only thing that matters in a sense is, “Occasionally weird things happen”. They may or may not break the laws of physics, as almost certainly physics is based on consciousness and our “Laws of Physics” are fake to begin with, but the important part is they are consensus very rare, and almost-consensus, not on command.

    But they CAN happen.

    So that’s to say, I don’t know. No surprise. Your point is valid and a good way to put it.

    #153762
    thomasjkenney
    Participant

    @poppie: That’s pretty darn close to my view. Kewl!

    #153763
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Someone raised a pretty good point about NATO and European countries who belong to it. Not too long ago a couple of NATO members destroyed a couple of other NATO members through blatant, barely concealed and unprovoked acts of war.

    Wow! The victims weren’t even allowed to complain! All that they could do was make a mental note to themselves, “Well, THAT happened!” My sworn ally just criminally raped me to advantage itself.”

    Water under the bridge now. No hard feelings, BUT one DOES have to wonder whether it makes any sense to go on being a dues paying & compliant member of NATO which does seem to have this habit of making its members perform self-destructive acts upon themselves and their neighbors.

    In any case, this does not bode well for the immediate future of NATO.

    #153764
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Israel just used food trucks as bait to lure and entice starving people out from their places of safe hiding so that they could be killed en masse, which Israel proceeded to do. It required pre-planning and of course could not have been done without direct orders from above.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/mass-civilian-casualties-after-israel-opens-fire-crowd-rushing-aid-trucks-gaza

    #153765
    zerosum
    Participant

    The innocent years, prior the web
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web

    #153766
    John Day
    Participant

    @Dr. D: Noted.

    @DBS: Moon of Alabama presents the Al Jazeera version, which is a planned ambush.
    Zionists Use Food-Baits To Attract And Kill Starving Civilians
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/02/zionists-use-food-bait-to-attract-and-kill-starving-civilians.html#more

    #153767
    chooch
    Participant

    Lira’s wife filed for divorce in March of 2021, almost a year before the SMO. Maybe he is on Ken Lay Island. He is certainly not a Carl von Ossietzky.

    #153768
    John Day
    Participant

    Ukrainian drone operators zoom in on flying saucer hovering over battle zone. Video.
    https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1762636576331370651

    #153769
    WES
    Participant

    Black Holes:

    Black Holes sort of look like funnels.
    Or maybe a toilet that looks like a funnel!
    On earth we have both cw and ccw toilet flushes.
    Matter that goes spiraling down, comes out of the other end.
    Probably a little worse for the wear and tear, and more than a little bit mixed up and confused.

    Now can anyone tell me if Black Holes spiral cw or ccw or both?
    I have often wondered what comes out the other end of a Black Hole, if anything?

    #153770
    WES
    Participant

    Oh, so that is where my Frisbee went!

    Frisbee Tales:

    When I went to Siberia in 1983, I took a Frisbee because it was flat and took up no room in my suitcase.
    One day when I was playing with the Frisbee, my Russian interpretor showed up.
    I asked her if they had Frisbee in Russia?
    After a rather long confused looking pause, she correctly said “Yes”.

    I took that to mean, they had at least one, mine!
    The look on her face was absolutely priceless!
    She was totally unprepared for this “out of left field” question!

    #153771
    wdt
    Participant

    Damn, lost 1/2 page
    Lira was kind of dumb, did he not believe himself?
    He did have a warning in the 1st jail stint
    So, abandon bike, swim river (and do it smartly)
    He was alive when people crossed iron curtain, this is no different
    His life was worth a BMW motorcycle, what a deal

    #153772

    My god is in the winds that blow,
    And in the dainty falling snow.
    My god is in the raging gale;
    The endless drifts, the pounding hail.

    My god is in the rustling trees,
    And in the birdsong on the breeze.
    My god is in the bugs and beasts;
    In solitude, and family feasts.

    My god is in the warming hearth,
    And in the rich black fertile earth.
    My god gives hope I might survive,
    And makes me glad to be alive.

    #153773
    Celticbiker
    Participant

    God knows 1 thing, for sure, you navel gazin mutherfuckers are completely full of shit. If I travelled back in time, 100 years and picked the dumbest lookin mongoloid I could find, he’d have 10X the common sense of anyone I meet today. Education is jew/propaganda mindfuck. This is why 70% of people willingly had that shit injected into them. This is why people vote and actually think things will improve. This is why people stare at talmudvision and walk around with a fuckin phone that tracks and listens to them. Could Sodom and Gommorah be any more disgusting than what we witness, daily, today? Something big is coming, this inverted jew , satanic nonsense…will not stand.

    #153774
    zerosum
    Participant

    https://www.modernghana.com/videonews/aljazeera/1/404022/
    Biden reacts to Israeli attack on aid recipients

    #153775
    those darned kids
    Participant

    if the flaccine is “jew/propaganda mindfuck”,

    ¿why did 75% of israelis get it?

    “IT’S THE JEWPLOT TO ELIMINATE JEWS!”

    #153779
    John Day
    Participant

    Man Woman And Child https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/man-woman-and-child

    Her Husband Burned Himself At The Pentagon To Protest The Vietnam War​, a brief interview with Norman Morrison’s widow, Anne Welsh.
    “Tina said, ‘Daddy has died, but now his love has spread’.”
    In a letter he mailed to Welsh, Morrison reassured her of the faith in his act. “Know that I love thee … but I must go to help the children of the priest’s village”.

    ​ Hindustan Times has this story, Aaron Bushnell was privy to confidential ‘intelligence data’ on US operations in Gaza
    ​ Aaron ranted that he had “top-secret clearance” for military intelligence data in a call to his friend on Saturday night, The Post reported. “He told me on Saturday that we have troops in those tunnels, that it’s US soldiers participating in the killings,’’ the friend claimed.
    ​ The friend went on to suggest that Aaron had stated US had troops on the ground, who were killing large numbers of Palestinians. The friend believes these claims may be true as Aaron’s job was to process intelligence data and some of that was linked to Gaza conflict. “One of the things he told me is that coming across his desk … was the US military was involved in the genocides going on in Palestine,’’ an unnamed friend was quoted by The Post.
    ​ “There’s just too many things I don’t know, but I can tell you that the tone of his voice just had something in it that told me he was scared,’’ the buddy said.​ “I’ve never heard that tone come out of him.”
    https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/aaron-bushnell-was-privy-to-confidential-intelligence-data-on-us-operations-in-gaza-friend-makes-sensational-claim-101709105818124.html

    ​ Moon of Alabama, Zionists Use Food-Baits To Attract And Kill Starving Civilians
    The trucks were sent by the Zionists. No other organization was involved. But when people came near to the trucks to collect the food they had carried into Gaza the Zionist went berserk , ‘Massacre’: Dozens killed by Israeli fire in Gaza while collecting food aid​ , Al Jazeera, Feb 29 2024 ​ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/29/dozens-killed-injured-by-israeli-fire-in-gaza-while-collecting-food-aid
    ​ More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and some 700 others wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds waiting for food aid southwest of Gaza City, health officials say, as the besieged enclave faces an unprecedented hunger crisis.
    ​ The Gaza Ministry of Health said on Thursday said at least 104 people were killed and more than 750 wounded, with the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemning what it said was a cold-blooded “massacre”.
    ​ People had congregated at al-Rashid Street, where aid trucks carrying flour were believed to be on the way. Al Jazeera verified footage showing the bodies of dozens of killed and wounded Palestinians being carried onto trucks as no ambulances could reach the area.
    ​ “We went to get flour. The Israeli army shot at us. There are many martyrs on the ground and until this moment we are withdrawing them. There is no first aid,” said one witness.​.. “I have been waiting since yesterday. At about 4:30 this morning, trucks started to come through. Once we approached the aid trucks, the Israeli tanks and warplanes started firing at us, as if it was a trap.​”
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/02/zionists-use-food-bait-to-attract-and-kill-starving-civilians.html#more

    #153780
    John Day
    Participant

    ​ Aid Truck Stampede ‘Massacre’ In Gaza: Israel Accused Of Opening Fire On Crowd
    ​ Israel is disputing local accounts of what happened and says people died following a stamped caused by Palestinians rushing aid trucks.
    There are several different versions of what happened, but all accounts agree that mayhem was unleashed when some 30 humanitarian aid trucks containing food were positioned on the street under Israeli protection…
    ..Palestinians say that Israeli troops shot indiscriminately into the crowd and used the aid trucks in a kind of “ambush” – while Israel’s military says people were killed in a “stampede for aid” and “crowd crush”, and that some of the deaths were the result of Israeli soldiers being under immediate threat.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/mass-civilian-casualties-after-israel-opens-fire-crowd-rushing-aid-trucks-gaza

    ​ G​ilbert Doctorow, Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation speech today: an overview
    ​ Earlier today Vladimir Putin delivered his annual address to the Federal Assembly, Russia’s bicameral legislature, of which the State Duma is the lower house. In addition to the federal level legislators and administrators, the audience numbering slightly more than 1200 included regional governors, leaders of civil society, i.e. representatives of volunteer organizations having national importance, and a large contingent of active servicemen who have participated in the Special Military Operation.
    ​ The speech lasted a little more than two hours. To understand its masterful construction, you had to sit through it to the very end, because in the best rhetorical traditions, Putin came full circle. He opened with a long segment dedicated to those actively fighting on Russia’s behalf in the Donbas and all along the line of contact with the enemy forces, risking their lives every day for the sake of the Motherland. This segment culminated in a moment of silence in memory of those who died in the SMO. And he ended the speech with his vision of how those who have distinguished themselves on the field of battle, those who have led men to heroic feats, will be the new ‘elite’ of Russian society occupying the top positions in government, in business and in other spheres.​..
    ..Western analysts will bore down on one or another point in a speech which had a great many points and not convey the feel of the address and what it tells you about Russian society and Russian government today.​ That is precisely the mission that I set before myself now: without going into detail on each separate item in Putin’s speech, instead to characterize the priorities of this government today and for the future…
    ..The unmistakable take-away of Putin’s speech is that Russia is today a social market economy which is striving to raise the length and quality of life of the population. The well-known Russian state promotion of ‘traditional values’ has at its core encouragement of families with three or more children. This is first and foremost presented as a validation of the family as the essential building block of society. Putin freely admits that Russian wages are very low, too low in fact, and many measures in the social programs he has introduced and is proposing to expand in this speech are aimed at putting money in the pockets of those who create large families through subsidies in cash and in kind.
    ​ Let me say in passing that there are no restrictions on which families are being encouraged to multiply. It is no secret that Muslims in Russia, as elsewhere, presently have more children than do blue-eyed Slavs. No matter. Putin insists that every citizen is equally ‘Russian’ whatever his or her religious or ethnic identity and this is borne out by the government’s demographic policies…
    ..Putin remarked that last year Russia produced twice as much residential housing (in square meters) as did the Soviet Union in its best year at the end of the 1980s…
    ..From Putin’s recitation of new national projects, it is clear that attention is now also being directed to help those kids who have been born on Putin’s watch and are adolescents today…​ Perhaps it would be better to understand this project as ‘Human Resources’ because it aims to vastly improve vocational training, to introduce secondary school students to factories and other work places and open their eyes to the real world opportunities before them. Money will be allocated in the next six years of a new presidential term to more than double the number of engineering schools in the country. The objective is to ensure that the million job openings for highly trained professionals in industry will find properly prepared candidates.
    ​It is interesting and telling that Vladimir Putin’s attention to business interests came near the very end of his speech.​.. Measures will be taken to strengthen the role of stock exchanges in raising capital for industrial investments. And business will be assisted by continuing major federal infrastructure investments in highways, high speed railways, renovated airports and an expanded national commercial fleet, including service on the Northern Sea Route.
    ​ I will not say more. I found the most impressive part of the speech to be people-centric, not Putin’s reiteration of Russia’s stated position with respect to negotiations with the USA over strategic stability and similar foreign policy issues.

    Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation speech today: an overview

    More typical points from The Hindu, Putin warns that sending Western troops to Ukraine risks a global nuclear war
    ​ Mr. Putin cast Western leaders as reckless and irresponsible and declared that the West should keep in mind that “we also have the weapons that can strike targets on their territory, and what they are now suggesting and scaring the world with, all that raises the real threat of a nuclear conflict that will mean the destruction of our civilization.”
    ​ The strong statement followed earlier warnings from Mr. Putin, who has issued frequent reminders of Russia’s nuclear might since he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 as he sought to discourage the West from expanding its military support for Kyiv.
    ​ Mr. Putin emphasized that Russia’s nuclear forces are in “full readiness,” saying that the military has deployed potent new weapons, some of them tested on the battlefield in Ukraine.​..​
    ..He rejected Western leaders’ statements about the threat of a Russian attack on NATO allies in Europe as “ravings” and again dismissed Washington’s claim that Moscow was pondering the deployment of space-based nuclear weapons.
    ​ Mr. Putin charged that the U.S. allegations were part of a ploy to draw Russia into talks on nuclear arms control on American terms even as Washington continues its efforts to deliver a “strategic defeat” to Moscow in Ukraine.​ “Ahead of the U.S. election, they just want to show their citizens, as well as others, that they continue to rule the world,” he said. “It won’t work.”
    ​ In his speech that focused heavily on economic and social issues ahead of the March 15-17 presidential vote, Mr. Putin argued that Russia was “defending its sovereignty and security and protecting our compatriots” in Ukraine, charging that the Russian forces have the upper hand in the fighting.
    ​ He reaffirmed his claim that the West was bent on destroying Russia, saying “they need a dependent, waning, dying space in the place of Russia so that they can do whatever they want.”​…
    ​..Mr. Putin has repeatedly said that he sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022 to protect Russian interests and prevent Ukraine from posing a major security threat to Russia by joining NATO. Kyiv and its allies have denounced it as an unprovoked act of aggression.
    ​ The Russian leader has repeatedly signaled a desire to negotiate an end to the fighting but warned that Russia will hold onto its gains.
    https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/putin-warns-that-sending-western-troops-to-ukraine-risks-a-global-nuclear-war/article67899195.ece

    ​John Helmer, Scorching The Earth Westward – What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses
    ​ The collapse of the Ukrainian army following the battle of Avdeyevka, and its disorganized retreat, have accelerated Russian military thinking of how far westward the NATO allies will decide that the Ukrainian statelet can be defended against the expected Russian advance – and how fast new NATO defences can be created without the protection of ground-to-air missile batteries like Patriot, long-range artillery like the M777, and mobile armour like the Abrams, Bradley, and Caesar: all of them have already been defeated in the east.
    ​ In short, there is no longer a NATO-command line of fortification east of the Polish border which deters the Russian General Staff. Also, no bunker for the Zelensky government and its NATO advisors to feel secure.​..
    ​..Offence is now the order of the day up and down the contact line. The daily bulletin from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow calls this “improving the tactical situation” and “taking more advantageous positions”. In the past three days, Monday through Wednesday, the Defense Ministry also reported the daily casualty rate of the Ukrainian forces at 1,175, 1,065, and 695, respectively; three M777 howitzer hits; and the first Abrams tank to be destroyed. Because this source is blocked in several of the NATO states, the Russian military bloggers, which reproduce the bulletins along with videoclips and maps, may be more accessible; also more swiftly than the US-based podcasters and substackers can keep up.
    ​ Moscow sources confirm the obvious: the operational objective is to apply more and more pressure at more and more points along the line, in as many sectors or salients (“directions” is the Russian term) as possible simultaneously. At the same time, air attack, plus missiles and drones, are striking all rear Ukrainian and NATO airfield, road, and rail nodes, ammunition storages, vehicle parks, drone manufactories, fuel dumps, and other supply infrastructure, so as make reinforcement and redeployment more difficult and perilous.
    ​ What cannot be seen are the Russian concentrations of forces aimed in the north, centre and south of the battlefield. Instead, there is what one source calls “an educated guess is that when the main blow comes, it will be North, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, or Centre, Dniepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, or both simultaneously.”

    SCORCHING THE EARTH WESTWARD — WHAT COMES NEXT AS THE UKRAINIAN ARMY COLLAPSES*

    ​ ​Yesterday, starting at the 20:25 time mark, and lasting a few minutes, Dima at Military Summary Channel proposed that the Russians may be politically preparing to come to the aid of Transnistria, as they came to the aid of Donetsk and Luhansk. Transnistria is a russian enclave northwest of Odessa, attached to Moldova, and bordering Ukraine, which never consented to leave the USSR, It has existed as a semi-autonomous and self governed region “within” Moldova, protected by Russia, but is now subject to border sanctions from Ukraine and the new NATO-influenced President of Moldova. Transnistria has petitioned the EU, Red Cross and other international bodies for relief, which Donetsk and Luhansk did not do, and has also petitioned Russia, as they did. Transnistria happens to host the largest supply of Soviet weapons in Europe, guarded perpetually by 1200 Russian soldiers. This reminds me of American forward-staging of supplies in Saudi Arabia, and places like that, so that soldiers and specialists can just be airlifted in. Russia would presumably have to violate Ukrainian airspace with troop transports for a few days to do that. It may be feasible at this point, when spring mud stalls the ground war. This would place Russian forces about a 2 hour drive from Odessa on excellent highways and with railways along the same route. The Russians would have to make do with 1980s artillery, tanks and other equipment, of course. Another Russian force might advance through Kherson.
    The Russians Entered Krasnohorivka | Transnistrian Crisis | Orlivka Was Taken. 2024.2.28​

    #153781
    John Day
    Participant

    “Americans Are Being Lied To About Ukraine” – Tucker Carlson Reflects On Putin, Zelensky, Navalny & Nuclear War
    ​ Carlson explained that the West’s escalation of the conflict long ago into a full-blown proxy war has not only resulted in more needless Ukrainian deaths, but it has been devastating for the United States. “I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective,” Carlson told Fridman. “There’s a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale that people do not understand.”​…
    ..​”I guess I’m a child of a different era. I’m a child of participatory democracy to some extent, where your opinion as a citizen is not irrelevant. And I guess the level of lying about it was starting to drive me crazy​”…
    ..Russia is turning out artillery shells, which are significant in a ground war at a ratio of seven to one compared to all NATO countries combined…
    ..And so we haven’t had a world war in 79 years. But one nuclear exchange would of course kill more people than all wars in human history combined.​ I am counting. Because I think it obviously, it’s completely demonic and everyone pretends like it’s great. Nuclear weapons are evil…
    ​..He [Putin] wants a settlement, he wants a settlement. He doesn’t want to fight with them rhetorically and he just wants to get this done. He made a bunch of offers at the peace deal. We wouldn’t even know this happened if the Israelis hadn’t told us…​ Well, the U.S. government’s not allowing negotiations… I really care about what the U.S. government does because they’re doing it in my name, and I care a lot because I’m American. We are the impediment to peace….
    ..This week there’s been a curious story to emerge in Russian state media sources involving a bizarre ‘assassination plot’ linked to Kiev, which allegedly was supposed to target Carlson while he was in Russia. Interestingly, the allegations have been picked up in major Indian media outlets, among some other international outlets, though it warrants a high degree of skepticism.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tucker-carlson-gives-wide-ranging-reflection-putin-interview-americans-are-being-lied

    Dutch Are Lone Supporters Of Macron’s ‘EU Boots On The Ground In Ukraine’ Plan
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tiny-netherlands-only-country-back-macrons-call-boots-ground-ukraine-option

    ​ Charles Hugh Smith points out that chat-bots are to keep us at bay, so we don’t cost companies anything. Who Error-Corrects AI?
    Part of why AI chatbots are so dreadful is we know the corporation / agency doesn’t care whether our problem gets resolved or not.
    https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/who-error-corrects-ai

    ​Meryl Nass MD, The ‘Negotiating Text’ of the new WHO Treaty on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: An Initial Analysis and Under-examined Points of Concern
    Amrei Müller is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer (Ad Astra Fellow) at University College Dublin, Sutherland School of Law. Dr. Silvia Behrendt is the founder and director of the Global Health Responsibility Agency
    https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-negotiating-text-of-the-new-who

    ​ The ‘Negotiating Text’ of the new WHO Treaty on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: An Initial Analysis and Underexamined Points of Concern​
    Despite recent difficulties in the on-going negotiations, the drafting process of the WHO Pandemic Agreement and the process of amending the IHR are officially scheduled to continue in February 2024 and be brought to an end in May 2024.
    The Negotiating Text
    ​ Overall, the Negotiating Text follows a biomedical and securitised approach to pandemic preparedness and response. That is, it is led by the doctrine of Global Health Security (analysed by the authors, others and, more generally) and thus promotes constant global biomedical surveillance, preventive R&D on pathogens with pandemic potential, routine emergency authorisations of investigational vaccines or therapeutics for global administration and the transformation of the WHO towards a global procurement and distribution agency for pandemic products, in particular vaccines. The Negotiating Text thus appears to conclusively leave behind traditional, time-tested and more holistic approaches to the management of infectious disease outbreaks that have been relied on by the WHO before the Covid-19-PHEIC, e.g. in the 2019 WHO Non-pharmaceutical Public Health ​ Measures for Mitigating the Risk and Impact of Epidemic and Pandemic Influenza and in domestic public health guidelines (p.70) on the response to infectious disease outbreaks. The draft provisions of the Negotiating Treaty examined in the following reflect the main components of the biomedical approach and its envisaged domestic and international institutions.
    The Envisaged Global Bio-surveillance System
    ​ The Negotiating Text foresees the building of a global bio-surveillance system with international (WHO) and domestic components. In short, the draft treaty envisages that each state builds up laboratory capacities that then work together as a global network through which they can identify emerging and re-emerging pathogens, determine and share the genetic sequence data of these pathogens and inform the WHO and other member states about them.​..

    The ‘Negotiating Text’ of the new WHO Treaty on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: An Initial Analysis and Underexamined Points of Concern

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