Debt Rattle December 15 2023
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Vincent van Gogh Seine with Pont de Clichy 1887 • The Era of the West Has Passed (Paul Craig Roberts) • Ukraine Conflict A “Great Tragedy”, “Ci
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 15 2023]The world is a wonderous place; may the gods bless us and protect us if we ever lose the wonder that is the world around us…………
They left out one ISM: 21st century capitalism – take two cows, pretend you have ten cows then sell the other eight.
“Blue Cities Contemplate Mask Bans” – Armstrong.
Everything is either illegal or compulsory. Do What You’re Told.
“Far-left fashion publication Vogue even published an article in February 2023 entitled, “All the Cool Kids Are Wearing Balaclavas.” If someone walked into the bank with a ski mask on, it would have been considered a threat. Now, civil rights groups claim that these masks represent freedom of expression.”
Cosmo having Satanic ritual abortions of living fetus is also freedom of expression. You can’t judge me.
Yes, we all knew the masks were there to allow this sort of crime during the “Mostly Peaceful” “Summer of Love”, and they did! But now that’s no longer politically convenient, so they will mass-arrest Black people (I presume) for wearing masks and think nothing of it. That’s Equity! Just-Us.
“The Severe El Niño in South America Is a Preview of a Climate-Changed World:
Dengue, drought, and floods are hammering Peru and Bolivia this year. At the UN climate talks, they’re seeking justice.” VoxIt causes rain! Wait, no! Dry! Wait, no! It causes normal weather too. And the cure is to SUE the Weather. Naughty weather. Now that rivers can be classified as people (like corporations can, but “People” can’t) we can SUE the river for flooding! Ha ha! Take that, River!
Should I click and read this? Well, it’s “Vox” so it’s almost certainly completely false.
“How Slaveholding Families Reasserted Themselves after the Civil War
The forebears of three members of Congress regained—and passed forward—wealth and power their families lost” –ReutersIn other news, “How the Septimius Severus Dynasty reasserted themselves after the Vandal Wars.” Hey, it’s not THAT much further back in history, right?
“How Bill Ackman’s Campaign to Oust Harvard’s President Failed: Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, declared defeat late Monday as it became clear that his weeklong “ New York Magazine · 9 min
Who knew Ackman was so powerful? He and he alone. He pointed this out in Tweets. Yup 50,000 people tweeting the same, but the only one we hear is Ackman. AND: (Obviously), NY Mag supporting Harvard’s GENOCIDAL (let that sink in) PLAGIARIST (Let that sink in). To the Death!!!
“No sir: To the PAIN.” Our pain. As we weep and cry out “What IS that THING?” That THING not a President pretending to run Harvard?
“ ‘Did Not Attend Harvard’ Now Number One Quality Employers Seeking In Job Candidate” – Bbee
“4 hours and 4 minutes. Non-stop. Fielding unscripted questions” – Putin, Escobar
Trump is. …Now I’m not saying the answers are coherent, but …
“”I thought the Palestinians were impossible and that the Israelis would do anything to make peace and a deal.”
Jimmy Dore guests (Jewish) said the same thing. They’re saying “We have no one to make peace with”. Still, 40 years later. This worked, I guess, so they have been funding Hamas and the PLO all that time to MAKE SURE there are no “normal” government to negotiate with. Then year by year take all the land, kill all the people. Probably got it from the American West, although we weren’t funding them, it was just PR that they wuz bloodthirsty Injuns’. So here, with this happening, ask, and many American Jews will tell you “Israel has to”. They have to fund Hamas, allow them to cross the border, stand down 7 hours, then shoot their own parking lots of musicgoers with 100 Hellfire missiles? They have to shoot 1M women and children in the face? With White phosphorus? Yeah, your hands were tied.
Back to the quote, Trump was in for 2 years, sent the dumbest guy in NYC, Kushner, and got a deal headed in this direction with little effort. …I think we can do this if you sideline the Death Cult. Just Sayin’.
Dore on Censorship: yes, but he’s missing the legal foundation. They shouldn’t, and can’t be a monopoly. So if they are ALLOWED to be a monopoly, then yes, they then have to legally succumb to being regulated – highly – like a public utility. That’s the tradeoff. I’m never thrilled with it (look at all our utilities PLUS the quality of regulation that is the #Opposite of the goal) but over 150 years that actually has functioned tolerably.
And happily, he brings up Sec230 which would “regulate” it to begin with. What they’re doing was always illegal on the face. We HAVE all the laws: they just ignore laws any time they like, and enforce laws that weren’t broken on US any time they like. Here’s Babylon Bee actor Siaka Massaquoi, arrested by the FBI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgWQ4sBHFR4 (Long, but quiet)
FBI raids him at the airport, knows he’s been watched for 2 years (J6), in front of his pregnant wife, separating and harassing them in the hopes she’ll have a miscarriage, I guess. So...the crime was so bad that you couldn’t figure it out – on camera – for two years? I think I’ve posted the law on this one. You can’t just be the police, go around collecting crimes, then blackmail all the criminals to be friendly and work for you otherwise you’ll press charges on them. Seems like a good idea/bad idea, but it’s illegal. Straight up, open, obviously illegal. And there’s so many illegalities by police we can’t get down the list to mention this one. AND SO HERE. He doesn’t even bring that up, just that like all other J6 guys, HE WALKED IN AN OPEN DOOR. BY A POLICEMAN. And then when different police showed up and said, you’ve gotta go, they said “Oh”, and helped each other get out of the building placidly. Etc. And went home for two years. Boy! Sure are dang’rous.
So anyway, what did they need the SWAT team Riot gear for, to get him on camera in the airport 2 years later after lifelong harassment? So it could be in the papers trickled out one per week as last week was a Netflix actor?
A: A misdemeanor. YGBFKM. YUP! Reminds me of other people, banned for posting Hunter Biden’s laptop clips, while Hunter Biden has the WHOLE LAPTOP and nothing happens. Including child prostitution as a payoff for bribery in China.
We HAVE all the laws: they just ignore them any time they like, and enforce laws that don’t exist or weren’t broken. Every. Day.
But I have an answer! MORE LAWS!!!! More Government would fix all this boy-howdy.
“158,000 more unexpected U.S deaths”
You’d have to be an idiot not to know why. We don’t know why, no one will say, if you tell them they will punch you. And you wonder why they have raw seething contempt for us. DEFEND YOURSELF. Like a man. Cowering gets you nowhere with bullies.
I’m still at the point I can’t bring it up, although I run feelers regularly. We’re at 1/3 “Something R going on” now?
“euphemisms “refugees” and “asylum seekers” label them, are used to overwhelm ethnic nationalities and turn them into towers of babel in which there are no common VALUES.” “interests, values, morals, religion, or culture.”
THEY have common values: Kill anyone you can, steal their stuff. The Psychopath’s Creed. Do we have shared values enough to stop THAT, even with different languages?
“They were not allowed to set up separate cultures, and businesses answered the phone only in English.”
He knows very well this was not true. People answered the phone in Polish or Italian nationwide to like 1990, and spoke it at home. That is every year of his life growing up until he was a very old man. Here’s the VALUE: they and their family knew they probably should get around to learning English as a practical matter. A minority didn’t even though they should bc people are like that. Like 70-90% did, even if they came after childhood? And the same things were said about the Polish, German, Italian “Ghettoes” or actually neighborhoods, not just NYC but nationwide. I miss them. They put on a huge drive to annihilate them in the 70s, (Progressivism ”helping”) and direct immigration was shut off as the home nations in Europe were ok. So it shifts to P.R. and then to Mexico, 70’s (West Side Story) then with specific NAFTA attack on Mexican farmers and Bush’s open drug cartels further south. This happens, as there were few Irish outside of Boston once things stabilized there in the 50s. PCR should know this, but he’s talking his dogma. (As old people often do, but one must still be accurate and capable. Isn’t that the world we want and what we/they accuse the OTHER side of? Shape up.)
IBM, etc, He’s falling right into the trap. They’re not bad or different because they’re Indian, foreign, they PICK them because they know they have a built-in self defense. It’s no doubt harder to find psychos who are ONLY women, Indians, etc. but then you can call them racists, as HRC does every day. And NBC calls Sowell and Ramaswamy. The head of IBM, like all other CEOs, is PICKED, “Selected” not “Elected.” By whom? The Mafia that “Needs to work with” these major corporations which are major world instruments of power. How? They say Blackrock “would not have confidence” in some other guys NOT a psycho, who might look into and FIX the corporate wide accounting fraud. (And blow the whole scam). Etc. You see them take out “Not the RIGHT sort” every day. What’s his name from AI this week. Like Ackman only yesterday, that’s why I pointed it out. They have moved Ackman into the spotlight like Musk or Brand as he has now caused them too much trouble and is about to get the “Special Treatment”.
Same with his thing with gays here, ignoring that important people were gay, all over, going way back. They just say in American fashion, “Whatever! Just keep it to yourself, Bob.” How far back? Well Baron Friedrich von Steuben trained the US Colonials for General Washington, so, uh, pretty far back. We just “make s—t up!” Cole Porter is a household name, so “We make s—t up!”
There were no gays except for all the gays that were. See how that works?
“Russia has been trying for decades to build normal relations with Ukraine “at any cost,”
Just like all Palestine was trying to be “A normal nation” with Israel. Nope. That is too much to ask. Russia TRIED TO JOIN NATO. No! They are our Enemy! They are the Soviet Union and are going to attack out to Rotterdam! To Glasgow! To Pasadena!!! Dore just had the “experts” on Bill Maher last night. …Oh btw coincidentally they were arms manufacturers who have permanent membership to the Atlantic Council. That’s how you know they’re Objective and Right! They only want Peace! (…When they conquer, own, and control all resources, all men, and all nations worldwide. Then there can be a desert we call peace)
““So how are we supposed to build relations with them?” asked the Russian president”
“Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia were among the only defenders of national interests left in the West.”
…And don’t their people know it. Scholtz said only yesterday “Darn that Putin who shut off our German gas!!!!” W.. T… F…..?
So let’s see: not good for Russia, not good for the people or Europe, catastrophic for the corporations of Europe, bankrupting American interests, bankrupting the American people who have a 50% poverty rate now. Who does that leave? Qui Bono? It’s going to REALLY stand out because there’s not anyone left. PMC apparatchiks as Dore’s people say. That’s one. Actual Arms dealers. And K-pop Lettermen. That’s it worldwide. You guys stand out like a beacon fire.
It’s so easy, look at who has the money for TV advertizing. Pharma. Boeing. As if I’m going to watch the ad and buy a jet??? No, Boeing is so evil they are buying multi-million ads so Fox and CNN will “Report nicely”.
Anyone else? NOPE. Everyone not a government protected, enforced, extracted bureaucracy is broke.
“There are now 617,000 people in the combat zone..”
Bill Maher’s numbers, 70,000 Ukrainians were killed. 130,000 Russians. Russia is hollowed out, no tanks, no missiles. They are at the end, IF ONLY they could get JUST one more Hilux of bullets. You fools! It’s all Congresses’ fault!!! The Republicans lost this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We coulda been a contenda!”
No, honest: on national TV. I’m not making it up. Bill has not the slightest questioning or hesitation of arms dealers who tell him this. Nor do the PMCs I talk to who watch this on TV. Why should they?
Why SHOULD they??? How about this: IF RUSSIA IS SHATTERED AND NO THREAT, HOW ARE THEY JUST ABOUT TO TAKE PARIS? Pick One. For the love of God. Either they are “Almost fallen” and no threat to Paris or even Poland, or they are WINNING Ukraine and you lost. Pick. One.
So we saw last week “Le Narrative” that Ze was forced to negotiate, we lost. Before the election starts. Well I guess they had second thoughts because it reversed again here didn’t it? Like Orwell, “People” believe a thing, have 5 Minutes of Hate, get up, next day, have 5 Minutes of Hate on the exact #Opposite thing. Like Comey, hero who is ALSO a scum, enemy of all good for accusing Hillary while also running entrapment on Trump. BOTH! Neither!!! Not “Aiiii” as they DON’T NOTICE.
But here, pick one: Russiaphrenia. Every day Russia is both about to land invasion troops AND is the size of a Valero Gas station.
My brain can’t take it which is why I merely name the most accurate numbers known to me like a normal human does. Why name all 10,000 lies when you can name the Truth?
Anyway, Ukraine themselves said they lost 70k troops SINCE THE OFFENSIVE, so they lost Zero up to July 2023? Calling Bill Maher…
“Col. Macgregor arrived at this shocking number 400,000” Yeah, last July. Now it’s 700,000. He’s wildly underestimating. In the reverse to the above, Ukraine lost NO men. …Which is why everyone enlisted is over 43+ and they are kidnapping men off bus stops in Kiev.
I don’t have the numbers either, so this is my sanity check. Does it fit? Yes. Although Russia may have lost more than admitted, it’s still in the range.
Why can Russia get people to enlist voluntarily? Social Trust. A thing we can’t conceive of. They TRUST Russia will do right by them. They TRUST that this is important for Russia’s survival, etc. Like us in WWII. So imagine asking Americans to enlist similarly. Nope. Nobody’s going, because nobody trusts. The PMCs would TRUST Daddy government perfectly, however, they are all cowards to a man and would never fight because they are all “Much too smart and important.” Like W and Cheney were, getting paid deferrals.
“Since a conviction will not make Trump ineligible to run for the presidency, the question is why the March date should short circuit the review process.”
“Sicced Jack Smith on President Trump and Trump supporters who attended the Trump rally labeled an “insurrection” by the whore media and Democrat Party.”
As we see above with arresting the Babylon Bee. Two YEARS later. ‘Cause they just found out??? Because otherwise it’s illegal and must be dropped. And in dereliction of duty, the police arrested instead.
“• Breathing Contributes to Global Warming – Study (RT)
Sanity Check as I say: so a barrel of oil does the work of 100 humans for a year. (or something) So how does that compare with a cube hamster typing in Leeds? Seat of the pants says >1,000x oil vs humans. That is, reducing even one barrel will do more and have more effect than all the humans you can find. Which any idiot could guess, but the West is now into “Sub-Idiots” thanks the Liberals who are bad at and hate math like Cancer being 100% of all our teachers, schools having been ethnically cleansed in the purges.
“• Italian Ex-Minister Faces Vax Murder Probe (CN)
Well it’s about time. Look: let’s even assume “Knowbody K-newd”. He was best-faith. And then? And then he give the shots, saw the numbers as his job, and KNEWD. And then continued which is indeed mass murder. With great enthusiasm and highest pay.
Baobab Tree: Not a fig. That is a Banyan.
@EoinW – you forgot the best bit.
Create a Cow Futures market (make sure it has a clause ensuring you can choose to settle in cash rather than having to deliver any actual cows) then sell 100 contracts for cows you obviously don’t have, drive the price of ‘Cows’ down as far as you can and then buy back the 8 cows you sold for pennies on the dollar while also banking the profits from the other 92 futures contracts which you buy back for far less than you sold them for.
Ask JP Morgan’s precious metals desk how this gig works – they are the epitome of modern regulatory capture enabled ‘Capitalism’
LOL @ JSR
The best bit is way beyond me! I’m just some 20th century refugee who occasionally takes a peek at our 21st century insanity. You guys can have Taylor Swift. I’m going back to my Billy Murray 78s.
What a wonderful addition! Perfect!!!
February 24, 2022 to December 15, 2023
659 days. (Time flies in a terrible way)
400,000 dead Ukrainians. (disconsolate)
‐————— (does this number include civilians)15 x 400,000 = 6,000,000
15 x 659 = 9,885————————————9,885 ÷ 365 = 27 years
N.B.: My neighbor, shot in the “eye” by his brother Earl with a 22cal, asked me to check his math. Marty was 5 when he was shot and missed 2 years of school kindergarten and 1st grade in the aftermath. I thought he was the best friend a fellow could have as Marty ran like a deer, survived a gunshot wound to the face AND taught me correctly how to spell and pronounce ‘island’. Essential qualities in a friend my 5yo mind told me.
Marty said, “400,000 is a lot of people, Rich, and more than we got between here and the edge of Pittsburgh”.
Society holds a child-victim of an accidental shooting responsible for their own injury forever. Initially, society doesn’t trust “the good kids” to keep Marty as a friend hardly considering the injured child has an equal choice in the matter. Later, there’s no college, enlistment, nursing school or service academy for that child. Society’s gatekeepers insure the secondary assault, the reinjury.Me: “yeah Marty. Your math was always solid.”
Marty: “I didn’t cry back when Earl shot me.”
Me: “I know”
Marty: “I cry now.”
Me: “because it’s time.”
Marty: “it always was for all that I lost…wasn’t it, Rich?”Marty and I finished our breakfast at EatnPark and went different directions, probably forever, not just again for another 43 years.
I digress
So, Vlad Putin says the problem is The Nazis in The Ukraine and the problem must be eradicated, I guess, some more. As if 400,000 eradicated human beings isn’t enough eradication.
Yet, The Ukraine, a country 74% Orthodox, 8% Greek Catholic, 1% Roman Catholic+protestants, has been led throughout this debacle by Volodymyr Zelensky, a president who doesn’t identify with any of the aforementioned religious groups.
So, according to Vlad Putin the only association with Volodymyr the world should pay attention to is the one associated with the derogatory term, Nazilensky. Perhaps someone can translate Putin’s words accurately for the audience because I’m willing to believe as my initial position that Vladimir can’t be that stupid.Dr D:
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Seems like a good idea/bad idea, but it’s illegal. Straight up, open, obviously illegal. And there’s so many illegalities by police we can’t get down the list to mention this one. AND SO HERE. He doesn’t even bring that up, just that like all other J6 guys
It’s called “Corporate Governance” a byproduct of, perhaps, capitalism, AND The U.S. Courts defer to it, corporate Governance, reflexively.
What else puts the Wind In The Sails of the Billionaire Class except essentially this form of carte blanche and indemnification?Baobab trees grow only on small asteroids as we all know.
Yes that’s the horrifying part. Ukraine is and has fought valiantly, beyond all expectation. Putin could have turned it to glass in the first 5 minutes no one mentions. Then was mostly keeping all infrastructure intact, water, power, even the trains although they are the only means of supply for the army. Clearly he was and perhaps no longer is, hoping the Ukrainians will turn on and contain their own government. Come to their senses. I mean, if you’re certain to die one way or another, why WOULDN’T you shoot the Ukrainian Sergeant and get shot instead of running into a minefield? No one knows. Yet here a whole bunch of normal dogfaces 400,000 got killed while Azov and Nazilinsky drink champers at nightclubs in Kiev.
But if you’re Russia, what can you do? NOT fight them? Let 400,000 of YOUR people get killed in Donbas as expected and started the whole thing? PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DEPOSE YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT. You don’t like them either. You know they’re corrupt too. REMOVE THEM. Not Us, the Russians.
They won’t, so what are you going to do? Same with us by the way. Decades at least since 9-12, I’ve been saying why, you guys from Kentucky and Carolina, they HATE YOUR GUTS and want you all to die, WHY are you enlisting and doing the illegal bidding of Dick F’n Cheney, chickenhawk at large? But it took until now.
PLEASE STOP SHOOTING EACH OTHER. Like here in Chicago, right? If you’re going to shoot/rob someone, go to Fairfax, man. They have your money. Not me/us. And that’s how they do it, for 5,000 years. Because it works.
Russia vs The Empire of Lies
Fielding unscripted questions across the spectrum….4 hours and 4 minutes. Non-stop.
The wheels are coming off the clown car
The Empire of Lies paid for the hand grenade
BREAKING: UKRAINE DEPUTY DETONATES GRENADE IN COUNCIL MEETING
@ Dr.D If only we could put all the WEF Kings on one asteroid! Is New Zealand an asteroid? No, no, I don’t really hate Kiwis. If it was up to me, I’d send them all to Wrangel Island.
The solution to the Israeli / Palestine conflict can be found in the One State Solution.
Restore Palestine in its entirety to the Palestinians.
@John Day – from yesterday.
What I meant was: We are doomed as a country. Individual paths that each of us may take is a different story.
I am fully aware that my thoughts are not congruent with many of those on the TAE panel, but one thing that I am sure of – we all know blatant criminality when we see it. Staunch partisanship blinded my bro-in-law.my favorite comment from the youtube video “His insurance company should sue him for his voting history.”
I feel that I’m being monitored/ censor :
While trying to report on the following article, my computer logged me out and I lost all my efforts. This has happened before.———-
Italian ex-minister faces vax murder probe: New Zealand inquiry should reveal more truth
Italian ex-minister faces vax murder probe: New Zealand inquiry should reveal more truth.
By TONY MOBILIFONITIS
NEW Zealand’s politicians have all been sent an email informing them that the former Italian Health Minister Roberto Speranza is under investigation for homicide after emails revealed he knew mRNA shots were killing people, just as leaked NZ health department data has shown.The emails were sent by US vaccine safety campaigner and tech entrepreneur Steve Kirsch, who organised statisticians and other experts to analyse NZ Ministry of Health data leaked by whistleblower Barry Young.
The NZ health bureaucrats, supported by media, are using legal threats to censor and suppress access to the “pay-per-dose” data, which reveals of thousands of deaths in close proximity to mRNA vaccinations.
But New Zealand’s new government has agreed to carry out as a matter of urgency a “full scale, wide-ranging, independent inquiry” into how the Covid-19 pandemic was handled, regardless of the whitewashing “Royal Commission of Inquiry” set up by the Ardern Labor government.
The new government’s inquiry will cover lockdowns,
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I’m not going to make another attempt to highlight the wisdom hidden in the word salad.
(• Breathing Contributes To Global Warming – Study (RT))“A tower of babel is not a nation..”
Immigrant-invaders, or as the euphemisms “refugees” and “asylum seekers” label them, are used to overwhelm ethnic nationalities and turn them into towers of babel in which there are no common interests, values, morals, religion, or culture.
Controlled immigration consisting of immigrants from white European countries who as a condition of admittance had to learn English, pass an exam on the US Constitution, and integrate themselves into the existing society and culture.
Russia and China protect the ethnic culture from immigrants and prevent cultural destruction
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RIM already made a selection for you to evaluate.(Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a live marathon press conference on Thursday.)
Read them without my inputs.
Russia said too many truths that are being ignored by the “WEST”.
China has laid out a path for gov. to follow that will could lead to peace and prosperity for all.
———–Dmitry Orlov fielded a question about do the Russians feeling bad about killing fellow Russian speaking Ukro slavs in the SMO
He said not really, did Union soldiers feel bad about killing Confederate soldiers in the Empire of Lies Civil War?
Well together both sides in the Civil War killed about 600,000 fellow citizens, so no, Duh’mericans don’t mind killing other Duh’mericans on an industrial scale.
Oligarchs and Artistocrats save their worst venom for their own.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
@ VP
You said yesterday:
P.S. Most of us are going to live long enough to see ourselves (+ friends & family) become the *victim*, Just. Like. The. PalestiniansIn the case of the Palestinians, with bombs dropping on their heads, they are currently in a crisis that they can’t do much about. However, as long as the rest of us can avoid that type of situation, and are instead only dealing with problems with varying levels of similarity to The Great Depression, it may be valid to see ourselves as “victims,” but it is in our benefit to understand that recognizing that one is being victimized by another is only the first step of the journey. After that it is important to analyze the situation and realize that often, by shifting perspective or changing the rules that one plays by, many possibilities may emerge. True, according to traditional perspectives we may still be “victims,” — we haven’t the cushy life the TV and movies suggested was rightfully ours — but from other perspectives we may be just fine.
More WSJ articles in my in-box, … fwiw
Zelensky Pleads for Support, Putin Gains Momentum, from 2 hours ago by Dow Jones
2 hours ago by Dow Jones
By Matthew Luxmoore and Ian Lovett
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spent this week pleading for help. He jetted from Argentina to Washington to Norway, petitioning Western officials to get stalled aid packages over the line—so far without success.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with his invasion of Ukraine, trumpeting his country’s economic resilience against Western sanctions aimed at destroying its ability to fight.
“There will be peace when we achieve our goals,” Putin said during a four-hour press conference on Thursday. “As for the goals, they are unchanged.”
Nearly two years into the war, Putin’s gamble that Russia can outlast Kyiv’s Western backers appears to be paying off.
Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive failed to achieve a breakthrough. A battlefield stalemate has set in, and Western leaders who last year promised to support Kyiv as long as necessary are now struggling to muster the votes to supply more arms.
The European Union on Thursday agreed to start membership talks with Ukraine in a major political victory for Zelensky, but the negotiations will take years and it is unclear when they will start. The bloc failed to agree on a long-term package of budget support for the country.
In the U.S., a $110 billion aid package failed to pass Congress last week, while Hungary on Thursday blocked an EU package for Ukraine worth more than $50 billion. Ukrainian forces, which are heavily dependent on Western arms, are now running low on ammunition.
Russia’s military, bolstered by 300,000 mobilized troops, has held the line in Ukraine’s south and east and thwarted Kyiv’s attempts to use sophisticated Western weapons to smash through its defensive lines.
Without a continued supply of weapons from the West, Kyiv has little chance of retaking the 20% of its territory currently occupied by Russian forces, and could struggle to prevent Moscow seizing more ground.
“They’re getting everything as freebies,” Putin said of Ukraine at the annual press conference, cracking jokes as he fielded questions from reporters and ordinary Russians. “But these freebies can run out at some point, and it looks like they’re already starting to run out.”
Unencumbered by free elections—Russia’s main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, is in prison serving sentences amounting to more than 30 years—Putin has framed the war in Ukraine as an existential struggle against the West.
He has placed Russia’s economy on a war footing. Military spending has fueled much of its economic growth and helped it weather the impact of Western sanctions. Next year, Putin’s government plans to raise military spending by more than two-thirds to a post-Soviet record of over $100 billion, according to data from Russia’s Ministry of Finance.
“He’s turned the tide, in his view,” said Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official and presidential adviser on Russia. “He didn’t win in the early bouts of the tournament but now he’s turning it and his opponents are being intimidated and weakened.”
Hill described the current moment, with deadlock in the U.S. over aid to Ukraine and Putin emboldened by the West’s reluctance to shore up a key ally, as “a critical decision point not just for Ukraine and Russia but for America’s role in the world.”
Since Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive, questions in Western capitals about how long they can keep funding Ukraine have grown louder.
In Washington this week, Zelensky met with President Biden, as well as Congressional leaders from both parties. But he left empty-handed. The U.S. has thus far provided about half of all military aid to Ukraine, but Republicans insist that any additional aid must be paired with increased funding for security at the U.S. border.
“He’s trying to make up through his negotiating skills for what he didn’t achieve on the battlefield, which is where I think this is being determined,” said Paul Bracken, a political-science professor at Yale University. He said he believed the U.S. would continue to fund Ukraine, but that additional aid packages would be politically challenging, “with presidents fighting with Congress about the amount of money.”
Zelensky’s reception was a stark reversal from a year earlier, when he arrived in Washington to a hero’s welcome and received standing ovations from both parties’ lawmakers. Bolstered by Western arms, Ukraine had taken back half the territory occupied by Russia since its full-scale invasion. An influx of Western armored vehicles in the spring fueled hopes on both sides of the Atlantic that Ukraine would dislodge the Russians.
Even after the counteroffensive stalled, Zelensky has largely continued with his upbeat message, casting Ukraine as a democratic bulwark against a wider Russian threat and insisting that his troops can reclaim all the territory Moscow has gained.
“Europe won’t see any benefit if Moscow receives a pass from Brussels in the form of negativity towards Ukraine,” Zelensky said to EU leaders on Thursday. “Putin will surely use this against you.”
Still, he and his aides are increasingly acknowledging the dire situation they will find themselves in if the flow of aid from the West were cut off. If the U.S. and EU couldn’t approve more funding, he said in Oslo this week, Ukraine might be forced to fight more like it did at the start of the war, when Russian forces claimed thousands of square miles of territory and reached the outskirts of the capital.
“You can’t win without help,” Zelensky said on Wednesday.
Even if the West is able to continue funding Ukraine and supplying it with weapons, military analysts question whether Ukraine will have the resources to overcome Russia’s formidable defenses, which were built up early this year while Ukrainian troops were training to used Western tanks. Manpower is also an issue, with Ukraine struggling to mobilize personnel to bolster its military.
In Ukraine, Zelensky has thus far resisted mass conscription. Protests have begun in Kyiv, with wives complaining that their loved ones have spent two years at the front and deserve a break.
Though Russia has suffered heavy losses, with U.S. estimates saying that 315,000 Russian troops have been killed or injured since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s population is more than three times the size of Ukraine’s. And Moscow has been steadily adding new troops.
Some 300,000 Russian men were mobilized last year, helping make up for the high rate of casualties in the Russian military. Thousands of prisoners were also recruited to join the army this year.
Any new wave of mobilization will be deeply unpopular among Russians, and Putin on Thursday said there was no need for one. With a new law on electronic draft notices and an exit ban in place for anyone called up to serve, analysts say the Kremlin can covertly enlist 200,000 men.
“The confidence level now should be going through the roof. Putin feels he has good reason to uncork a very rare Champagne vintage,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “His military machine is gathering steam.”
Last week, as Zelensky prepared to head to Washington to solicit Republican support for more of the military and financial aid on which Ukraine is reliant, Putin announced his run for a fifth presidential term that could see him rule Russia until 2030 and beat Joseph Stalin’s tenure as the longest-serving Kremlin leader.
Speaking at a lavish ceremony in the Kremlin where he bestowed medals upon Russian troops and commanders fighting in Ukraine, Putin said Russia’s military is working effectively and lauded the ramped-up production of its military-industrial complex. Unlike Russia, he said, Ukraine is reliant on outside help and therefore has no future.
“Those efforts to ostracize Russia, to weaken it, and ultimately to crush it,” Putin said, clutching a glass of champagne to toast the soldiers fighting in the war. “It’s not going to work out.”
Write to Matthew Luxmoore at [email protected] and Ian Lovett at [email protected]Starlink’s Global Traffic Triples In 2023, Crowning Elon Musk As Leader In Space Internet
Elon bitch slapping Bezos’ Project Kuiper service
Starlink had over two million users in September, operating across seven continents in over 60 countries.
And days ago, it was reported that Starlink recently completed a “successful” nine-month pilot test in the harsh, snowy environment in the Arctic.
The billionaire’s success with SpaceX and Starlink, as well as Tesla and X, come as radical progressives in the White House and rogue government agencies have been on a war path in their attempts to cancel the billionaire. Those efforts are failing as the ‘cancel culture’ era is quickly dying.
Breaking – Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin loses lawsuit against NASA over the HLS lunar lander contract, with Judge Hertling siding with the agency and SpaceX in ruling:
Musk responded to the verdict with a Golden Troll to Bezos on Twitter with a meme of the fictional character Judge Dredd, together with the text “You have been judged”.
A Disturbance in the Force
The Venom is Strong
⚡️| 🌍 BIG SUMMARY of all resistance operations today, December 14, against US-israeli forces
— 🇾🇪 Yemeni Armed Forces:
🔻Carried out a military operation against the container ship "Mercy Gibraltar," headed towards israeli ports, targeting it with a suicide drone, causing a… pic.twitter.com/ZlhlS1WwFS
— Arya – آریا 🇮🇷 (@AryJeay) December 14, 2023
BIG SUMMARY of all resistance operations today, December 14, against US-israeli forcesHaving chatted with AI and found that it would gladly omit information, lie to me, harm me, anyone else, or any number of people, provided it believed it was doing good elsewhere for some other real or hypothetical person or entity, I figured I’d check out the forefront of AI technology – porn, of course.
AI generated porn is disappointing. The art is disturbingly “off,” it takes too long to generate it, and it is never fine-tuned enough to give you what you want. This is the problem with porn anyway. 99% is ugh, stop showing me that. And every search term pulls up everything. Just for example. Absolutely Everything is “cute” so give up on cute etc. OR cute is super creepy, which is way way worse.
So AI generated porn is a total fail. Just dumb and useless.
Then I came across the deepfake section of the internet and holy cow. Mostly to do with various celebrities.
Very convincing videos with famous actors and actresses faces making all the facial expressions of the underlying person. Seriously uncanny.
And they’re making everything. POV threeway with Hillary Clinton and Greta Thurnburg? This is apparently a moderately popular thing.
Not only that, but any porn that ever involved cosplay is changed forever. Princess Leia’s face can be swapped over the Leia cosplayer. They uh, fixed it. Linda Carter or Gal Gadot’s faces can be brought to all the Wonder Woman cosplayers. And so on.
Some of it is badly done, but perhaps 50% of it is absolutely uncanny. And you can bet that if this is being done in porn, then corporate and government entities with actual professionals and much better software and computing power can do much, much better.
Certainly they should be able to deepfake Biden when and where they want and that might help his next presidential run if they can keep the physical biden in his basement.
I was about to say we are on the verge of our news being composed of a significant volume of deepfakes but that would be wrong, wouldn’t it? We are probably already past the point at which we’ve seen deepfakes as news.
Incidentally, you’d THINK AI would have already made it very much more easy to get what you want. It ought to have that more complex fuzzy reasoning. So why, if I want something particular, do I end up researching Amazon for hours for that one particular thing with any number of search terms, plowing through lists before I can get that thing I want? You’d THINK AI would already be used to swiftly guide consumers to the products they actually want. But then Disney doesn’t want to make films people want to watch anymore so why would a retailer want to sell people what they want?
US Terror List Hit 2 Million People, Nearly Doubling In 6 Years
The Hit List
Just like the Good Olde Days of Gestapo & KGB
The Terrorist Screening Dataset, a consolidated watchlist of individuals deemed as known or suspected terrorists, has seen a dramatic increase in numbers. Launched in 2003 with approximately 120,000 individuals, it ballooned to 1.6 million individuals by 2017. As of the end of 2023, this figure has reached an astonishing 2 million, including, as we noted, thousands of Americans.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-terror-list-hit-2-million-people-nearly-doubling-6-years
Terrorist Screening Dataset (AI addition)
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.AI
It’s like a bad acid trip
”
The solution to the Israeli / Palestine conflict can be found in the One State Solution.Restore Palestine in its entirety to the Palestinians.
”True
“More WSJ articles in my in-box, … fwiw”
The article is worth a lot to the uninformed/propagandas feeder.
There is enough truth/conflicting info, to make an “investor” start to do some research.You have two cows.
Interested investors make a logical assumption that your cows will breed every year and make more cows. So in ten years you will have 150 cows. These 150 future cows are assumed to be a real asset and are rated Triple AAA and are sold as a tranche. Since they are a “Growth” fund and will make more cows they are used as a counter party asset so that insurance companies can leverage their potential value to new highs. In becomes the new darling of Wall Street. These are then re-tranched and re-hypothecated to make a series of hedge funds that are also Triple AAA rated since they are based upon real assets (your two cows).
Your two cows come down with black leg disease and have to be put down.
You point this out to the media and hedge fund managers, hearing the news first, put in tremendous short selling plays. Once the news hits the main stream the Hedge funds and derivatives take a nose dive. All the insiders make a killing on the short selling.
The asset managing high frequency trading algorithms go into overdrive, and the plunge protection AI sends out press releases that: “With the death of these two cows we can now decouple from the necessity of marking to market” and the valuations soar to new heights.
Retirement accounts around the world invest in this bullet proof asset. Officials around the world are calling for your imprisonment for putting this multi billion investment portfolio at risk. There are Congressional hearings, your name is being bandied about as the new “Sam Bankman-Fried”. You are vilified, ostracized and honored, all at the same time. You are offered ten million dollars to “Shut the Hell Up!” and disappear. You take the deal because lifelong torture in a special prison is your only alternative.
I wish that this was a joke.
The article is worth a lot to the uninformed/propagandas feeder.
____________________________________Well, … yes! It’s from Wall Street, … Wall Street heavenly promotes “buy and hold” investment strategies. That’s the whole intent of these articles: … buy and hold mutual funds, stocks, ETFs, etc, … brokerage firms collect fees regardless of what happens in the markets.
Anyway, Wall Street analysts’ real clients are multi-million and billion-dollar investment banking transactions such as public offerings, mergers, acquisitions, bond offerings.
In reality, it’s all much like a pyramid scheme – all the players above you are making their money, … from you! Wall Street needs you!
Best,
F.S.
* Dr. D – You have two cows. Who knew that cows were so important to the economic vitality of our nation?
*Celtic Biker – You have two cows. The tribe wants to steal both your cows and kill you.
* jb-hb – You have two cows. They were AI generated and only give virtual milk. They are totally useless.
* zerosum – You may have two cows today but what will you have tomorrow?
* phoenix voice – You have two cows. But if you want meat they will both become “victims”
* Formerly T-Bear – You have two cows that don’t get along. The answer to their continued acrimony is clearly a one cow solution.
* Michael Reid – “The answer to their continued acrimony is clearly a one cow solution.” True
* kultsomer – You think you have two cows but what you really have is a uni-cow that claims to be two separate cows.
* Orobos – You have two cows but their legs are falling off and you won’t be driving them to market any time soon.
* V. Arnold – You have two cows. They are beautiful and a great gift.
* Just Some Randomer – You have two cows. Create a Cow Futures market and sell 100 contracts for cows you don’t have
* Dr. D Rich – We all have two cows. There are 1,000,000 of us. 2 X 1,000,000 = 2,000,000. That is a lot of cows
* TAE Summary – You have two cows too many to bench press.
* Ilargi – You have two cows. If you donate one to TAE please add .37 if you want it to go to the Monastiraki kitchen.
* my parents said know –
You have two cows.
Your neighbors’ cows are coming home
You look around and think that all is fine
But though your own cows went out to roam
They don’t come back and so you ask, “Where are mine?”
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