Debt Rattle December 27 2024

 

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  • #177837

    Giuseppe Arcimboldo Four elements – Water 1566   • Musk Backs Idea That Trump ‘Should Be Able To Fire’ Any Official (RT) • The Musk-Led Manufactu
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle December 27 2024]

    #177840
    EoinW
    Participant

    Kevin O’Leary? Another “Canadian” who made a living south of the border. I’m sure he knows what’s best for Canada.

    They want an economic union. What exactly is NAFTA? That was another nice idea for a tiny country to sign on the dotted line and tie itself into an agreement with America – the one nation that never keeps its word!

    Canada did well – for a pretty useless country – riding on the coattails of the British and American Empires. If it had an independent government it would be on the short list to join BRICs and jump onto the Chinese and Russian coattails.

    Instead Vichy, I mean Ottawa, is the battleground for the WEF and American Empire Loyalists to fight over. Lucky the country is so insignificant that it isn’t much of a fight.

    #177841
    tboc
    Participant

    Yeast in a highly concentrated fructose syrup

    #177842
    tboc
    Participant

    Genghis Don

    #177843
    Red
    Participant

    @eoinw: Kevin O’leary? Exactly. Ontario is the only place I found any amount of people saying join the US. Take a poll in Quebec! Here in the maritimes it is seldom heard and when it is I have noticed it to be mostly ignored. Then there’s BC? They seem to think they’re the California of the north! Well take a good hard look south, if you don’t change trajectory soon then that’s where you’ll find yourself in eight or ten years. Maybe they join the semi autonomous region that will be the US west coast. An economic union formed at the safe injection site!
    Ottawa does not reflect the population at large. Not now, and as far as I can tell, ever. Europe is already “balkanized” is just has to eliminate the EU and fall back to representing it’s individual nationalities. The USA will be some form of “balkanized lite” by the end of the decade. The centre cannot hold. Trump is running the pan americana tripe. Sabre rattling at Panama now and you will see much more of this in the near future. Another front? It will collapse in on itself as all empires have before. The road to ruin lies before you, will you continue forth? There is no going back but you don’t have to follow the path well worn. You can turn aside. There is no path there, so make your own.

    #177844
    Red
    Participant

    Meanwhile on a warming planet:

    Climate realist Tony Heller took to X to highlight the climate misinformation and disinformation campaigns waged by far-left corporate media on the global public.

    Heller referenced a 2007 BBC News article titled “Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’,” which warned readers of the supposed threat that “latest modeling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/doesnt-fit-msm-narrative-latest-arctic-ice-data-shows-26-larger-2012

    More proof that models aren’t as advertised and should not be used as informed tools.

    #177845
    John Day
    Participant

    Glad to see you back, Ilargi. I hope all is well wit’cha.
    😉

    #177846
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    Richard D. Wolff: The US Empire’s Struggle for Survival: A Desperate Crossroad

    #177847
    John Day
    Participant

    Political Realignments https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/political-realignments

    “Albrt” presents, Twirling Toward Freedom, Figuring out what it would look like if Trump were really trying for a long-term political realignment
    I said back in November there are reasons to believe that Trump might represent the end stage of a historic political realignment. That post did not attempt to define the nature or the likely course of the realignment, which leads to today’s hypothesis and counter-hypothesis: Trump and Vance could either consolidate power by improving the alignment of the Republican party with the working class, or they could further entrench the current model of a DC uniparty that works for the oligarchs, with two superficially warring factions carrying on a phony fight to the death over issues the oligarchs don’t care about…
    ..Since November, even the dumber organs of the mainstream media have recognized that the Republicans and the Democrats have started down the road of swapping core constituencies. The Democrats have more of the over-educated and the wealthy than they did 20 years ago, while the Republicans have more of the working class…
    ..At least one persuasive commentator, Musa al-Gharbi attributes this to the takeover of the Democratic party by the professional managerial class (PMC), who (to oversimplify) are not actually very good at managing things in the real world because they prefer to deal with abstractions. Al-Gharbi refers to the PMC as “symbolic capitalists.” …
    ..The first assumption this post makes is that a long-term realignment is in play. The second assumption is that the realignment has not yet been fully accomplished. The third assumption is that it should be possible for a non-expert (like me) to look at how the Trump-Vance administration implements its policies and tell whether they are serious about delivering concrete material benefits for working class citizens in order to consolidate the realignment. I’m going to try to identify some benchmarks in different policy areas that can be used to evaluate what happens over the next few years…
    ..So my test hypothesis is that Trump and Vance might make relatively rational decisions on a multi-year time frame with the goal of delivering real benefits to working people. The bar for achieving this is set very low… I’m talking about material benefits such as higher wages, better housing, price stability, or health care (as distinguished from “access” to health care through a corrupt intermediary a.k.a. insurance company). For purposes of this post it is important to distinguish material benefits (which the oligarchs want working people to have very little of) from culture war conflict and entertaining stunts…
    ..Trump and Vance might be unusually motivated to create a scenario where Vance can win the 2028 election. Among other things, Trump probably does not want to retire with the threat of another round of prosecutions hanging over his head. I’m calling it the Trump-Vance administration because I think showcasing Vance will be an important goal… If that does not happen, it will be the first indication that my test hypothesis is false.
    The null hypothesis I’m testing against is that Trump and Vance will continue the legacy uniparty scam in which both factions have basically the same macro-policies cloaked in divisive culture-war language, psyops, and stunts. Trump is well-suited by personality and by experience for the stunt politics of the recent past so the sensible thing would be to expect more of the same…
    ..To hold the swingy members of the working class on the Republican side, Trump and Vance need to take actions that help the working class have a viable path to prosperity…
    ..This post only considers domestic policy benchmarks. U.S. foreign policy is insanely chaotic right now,… and will probably be hard to distinguish from the delusional, pro-genocide approach practiced by the Biden administration. A nuclear war could start at any time…
    ..Immigration was one of Trump’s biggest hot buttons on the campaign trail, and is also one of the areas where it will be easiest to tell if Trump and Vance are serious. I think the immigration issue works particularly well as a litmus test…
    ..The economists who claim that immigration helps to increase GDP are not necessarily wrong. The problem is that all the gains go to the oligarchs and the cadre of sub-oligarchs and PMC oligarch-servicers who benefit from cheap labor…
    ..The obvious way to reduce the number of undocumented non-citizens working in the U.S. is from the employer side, through administrative measures such as requiring employers to use E-Verify for real and cracking down on duplicate use of social security numbers. Trump actually did this for a little while late in his first term. If this type of enforcement is not expanded, then Trump is not serious about stopping employment of undocumented immigrants.
    Trump did not campaign much on administrative measures involving employers, and instead promised massive deportations. Forcibly deporting enough people to make a difference would be extremely difficult…
    ..Lately Trump has shifted from talking about deportations to talking about ending birthright citizenship. Ending birthright citizenship is a red herring at best… Even if Trump were somehow successful in eliminating birthright citizenship, it would only apply to babies born after the change. Fussing about birthright citizenship is a stunt…
    ..Trump has dismayed some of his supporters by talking about expanding legal opportunities to work in the United States such as H-1B visas… H-1B visas are for “specialty workers” to fill jobs when employers claim there are shortages, so H-1B immigrants compete more with the PMC than with wage workers. Still, using H-1B workers to proletarianize the PMC does not help Trump-Vance earn the loyalty of the working class in the long run because it means that the children of the working class have less chance at upward mobility…
    ..Peter Turchin has said that in order to restore stability in the U.S, we need to “bring the relative wage up to the equilibrium level (thus shutting down elite overproduction) and keep it there.” End Times at 202. “Equilibrium level” means working class wages and conditions need to improve enough that a somewhat larger percentage of working class people decide it is OK to be working class, so they don’t need to go to college and try to become PMC. But some of the youngsters still want to move up. Importing a bunch of people to take existing PMC slots makes it much harder to achieve a stable equilibrium…
    ..In short, there are two tells with immigration. If Trump and Vance want to benefit citizen wage laborers, they need to require all employers to start using E-Verify or something similar, with real social security numbers. In order to benefit citizens who aspire to the next steps up the economic ladder, Trump and Vance need to reduce H-1B visas, not expand them. I don’t think either of these indicators can easily be fudged. If Trump and Vance limit immigrant work opportunities in this way, then I think the effects will be visible, and may even lead to significant inflation, particularly in food and construction…
    ..Tariffs and re-shoring manufacturing…
    ..A few weeks ago the big story was that Trump was going to restart American manufacturing by imposing massive tariffs. That story has now disappeared from the headlines in favor of immigration scare stories and whatever else Trump tweeted in the past 24 hours. Tariffs and industrial policy are difficult to do well. Imposing tariffs on goods that the United States has very little capacity to produce for itself will lead to short-term inflation and shortages followed by demand destruction rather than plentiful jobs.
    Success on this issue will be harder to judge than immigration, because it requires evaluating whether Trump is appointing serious people and whether the solutions they come up with are working… One thing to look for is whether Trump can stop picking fights over tough-guy sanctions and move toward tariffs or other measures that actually give a boost to viable American businesses…
    ..The other thing to look for is whether re-shored businesses (if any) actually start offering jobs Americans would take. It’s not just wages—we need to see more private sector working-class jobs that offer benefits, or else we need to see socialistic benefits to replace employment-based benefits. Either one would make working class life more acceptable to many people, helping to create Turchin’s equilibrium and consolidate the potential political realignment…
    ..Drill Baby Drill…
    ..Trump repeatedly said that one of his highest priorities would be a “drill baby drill” energy policy. On its face this does not make a great deal of sense, at least not as it relates to gas prices. “Drill baby drill” is an inherently boom-bust policy that would most likely lead to big swings in fuel prices…
    ..If Trump were serious about boosting the economy through domestic energy production, he would develop a long-term plan to stabilize American energy prices using shale production at a target price to help decouple the U.S. from the wild swings of the world oil market. If you want to encourage business confidence, you need to allow businesses to plan for longer term investment. This is especially true in capital intensive industrial sectors. Trump probably won’t be able to use Biden’s method of depleting the strategic oil reserve because Biden is leaving it pretty depleted…
    ..Like the tariff issue, this one is hard to judge because it requires Trump and Vance to do something difficult and complicated. Nevertheless, if they start to shift the energy rhetoric toward stability rather than driving prices down, that would be a sign they are serious…
    ..Firing federal workers
    Trump and his boy-wonder DOGE sidekicks Elon and Vivek have made a lot of idiotic statements about cutting the federal budget by firing huge numbers of people. My most constructive suggestion is to start with the National Endowment for Democracy. That’s the CIA sponsored organization that funds anti-democratic “color revolutions” in countries all over the world and was substantially responsible for starting the Ukraine war. If Trump and Vance actually succeeded in eliminating the National Endowment for Democracy, I would consider becoming a late-stage MAGA convert myself…
    ..Elon and Vivek can undoubtedly find a few offices full of DC wokesters to sacrifice, but that’s just another stunt. It won’t have a big impact on the budget, much less an impact on material conditions for the working class.
    Based on summary numbers at federalpay.org, most federal employees (around 3 million) are associated with the Department of Defense, which Trump fans are stereotypically supposed to support. The next two biggest departments are the departments of veterans’ affairs (over 400,000) and Homeland Security (over 200,000)…
    ..The Department of Education, a favorite target of Republicans even before Trump, only has a little over 4,000 employees. The department has a $45 billion budget, but most of that is pass-throughs to local schools to pay for things like special education…
    ..It may be theoretically possible to improve the economy by making the federal government more efficient, but it is fiendishly difficult to do in practice… Highly visible stunts with chainsaws are more consistent with the null hypothesis that Trump and Vance intend to continue the kayfabe of the existing uniparty scam…
    ..Legalizing marijuana
    This is an easy one. Trump toyed with this issue during the campaign, but did not commit. If Trump and Vance are really serious about doing something for the working class, they need to not only legalize marijuana at the federal level, they also need to erase past prosecutions and allow those convicted to rejoin polite society and qualify for decent jobs…
    ..Promoting alternatives to the college path…
    ..Telling young people that college is the only path to economic prosperity basically reinforces the power of the PMC, which is the real base of the Democratic party today and is Trump’s main enemy.
    Trump hasn’t made any promises about this and I don’t think anybody has any particularized expectations, so the field is wide open. Pushing trade schools (assuming you can find some that aren’t scams) would help, and would also help fill the open jobs if undocumented immigrants in the construction industry disappear from the labor market, or if re-shoring of industry starts to happen on any scale…
    ..If the Trump-Vance administration figures out a way to break the iron grip of college on our culture and our economy, then a substantially bigger realignment is possible. https://albrtsblog.substack.com/p/twirling-toward-freedom

    Bureaucracy kills by creeping dysfunction: Dan Davies, The Unaccountability Machine: Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions—and How the World Lost Its Mind – University of Chicago Press, 2024 How life and the economy became a black box—a collection of systems no one understands, producing outcomes no one likes.
    Passengers get bumped from flights. Phone menus disconnect. Automated financial trades produce market collapse. Of all the challenges in modern life, some of the most vexing come from our relationships with automation: a large system does us wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
    The problem, economist Dan Davies shows, is accountability sinks: systems in which decisions are delegated to a complex rule book or set of standard procedures, making it impossible to identify the source of mistakes when they happen. In our increasingly unhuman world—lives dominated by algorithms, artificial intelligence, and large organizations—these accountability sinks produce more than just aggravation. They make life and economy unknowable—a black box for no reason.
    In The Unaccountability Machine, Davies lays bare how markets, institutions, and even governments systematically generate outcomes that no one—not even those involved in making them—seems to want. Since the earliest days of the computer age, theorists have foreseen the dangers of complex systems without personal accountability. In response, British business scholar Stafford Beer developed an accountability-first approach to management called “cybernetics,” which might have taken off had his biggest client (the Chilean government) not fallen to a bloody coup in 1973. https://progressivegeographies.com/2024/12/26/dan-davies-the-unaccountability-machine-why-big-systems-make-terrible-decisions-and-how-the-world-lost-its-mind-university-of-chicago-press-2024/

    Cybernetics and Systems Science: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/cybernetics#:~:text=Cybernetics%20is%20the%20scientific%20study,%2C%20robotics%2C%20and%20systems%20science

    #177848
    John Day
    Participant

    This looks predictable and observable, therefore intentional. High Electricity Taxes Are Crippling European Industry
    European countries need to work out ways to lower taxes on electricity to revive the competitiveness of Europe’s energy-intensive industries, Leonhard Birnbaum, president of electricity lobby Eurelectric, told Reuters in an interview published on Monday.
    Power prices in the EU are up to three times higher than in the United States, for example, which further erodes the competitiveness of energy-intensive industries including aluminum, steel making, chemicals, and cement production.
    Europe is losing and will continue to lose competitiveness and jobs if it doesn’t tackle its high energy costs compared to other regions. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/High-Electricity-Taxes-Are-Crippling-European-Industry.html

    Sanctioned Russian LNG Shipment Travels Around World, Finds No Buyers
    Bloomberg reports that an LNG carrier called “Pioneer,” carrying a sanctioned shipment of Russian LNG, circumnavigated the world for four months, failing to find a buyer willing to breach US restrictions. “This vessel (called Pioneer) was spotted on satellite images picking up the first shipment from the Arctic LNG 2 facility in early August — despite camouflaging the move with misleading location information — but then spent well over four months hunting for a customer.” https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/sanctioned-russian-lng-shipment-travels-around-world-finds-no-buyers

    Again, on Christmas Day; Shadow-war? Finland-Estonia Undersea Power Cable Goes Dark As Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker Investigated
    Bloomberg reports that Finnish authorities boarded the crude oil tanker named Eagle S. after a 658-megawatt Estlink 2 power interconnector and several data cables were disrupted.
    The Estlink 2 electricity cable connecting Finland and Estonia was disrupted on Christmas Day, sparking concerns of another potential undersea cable sabotage incident in the Baltic region.
    The Financial Times reports that Finnish authorities are investigating a crude oil tanker named Eagle S. The tanker flies the Cook Islands flag and is reportedly part of Russia’s so-called “dark fleet.”
    Data from the ship-tracking website MarineTraffic shows the vessel slowed down at the time the 658 megawatt (MW) Estlink 2 power interconnector was disrupted. The tanker was transiting the Baltics on its way from St. Petersburg to Egypt. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/finland-estonia-undersea-power-cable-goes-dark-russian-shadow-fleet-tanker

    The Honest Sorcerer posits a world which escapes nuclear annihilation, which would destroy wealth, and kill some rich people. In this world, the rich have invested in good farmland, oil and gas wells, mines and factories as well as mortgages, so that they own all of the necessities of life after the financial crash, creating a neo-feudal economic system. Position yourself out of debt, with your basic necessities and a vegetable garden. Nuclear Neo-Feudalism https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/nuclear-neo-feudalism

    Mark Zuckerberg Denies Hawaii ‘Doomsday Bunker’ Existence, Calls It A “Little Shelter
    Bloomberg’s Emily Chang asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an exclusive interview at their estate in Lake Tahoe about a 4,500-square-foot underground structure – considered by some as a ‘doomsday bunker’ – at his 1,500-acre ranch in Kauai, Hawaii.
    Chang asked: “You do have a bunker there; is there something you know that we don’t?”
    Zuckerberg’s response was priceless because he denied it was a doomsday bunker, calling it a “little shelter … basement.” https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/mark-zuckerberg-denies-doomsday-bunker-existence-calls-it-little-shelter

    #177849
    John Day
    Participant

    Bond-investors vs. Citizens. Don’t be the first country to declare bankruptcy. France has a new government, again. Politics and crushing debt complicate next steps
    France’s president and prime minister managed to form a new government just in time for the holidays. Now comes the hard part.
    Crushing debt, intensifying pressure from the nationalist far right, wars in Europe and the Mideast: Challenges abound for President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Francois Bayrou after an already tumultuous 2024.
    The most urgent order of business is passing a 2025 budget. Financial markets, ratings agencies and the European Commission are pushing France to bring down its deficit, to comply with EU rules limiting debt and keep France’s borrowing costs from spiraling. That would threaten the stability and prosperity of all countries that share the euro currency.
    France’s debt is currently estimated at a staggering 112% of gross domestic product. It grew further after the government gave aid payments to businesses and workers during COVID-19 lockdowns even as the pandemic depressed growth, and capped household energy prices after Russia invaded Ukraine. The bill is now coming due. https://apnews.com/article/france-macron-bayrou-government-budget-96bb8e0e1740bdaf49d98cece0fac28a

    Charles Hugh Smith, What If Solutions That Worked in the Past No Longer Fix What’s Broken?
    You see the irony here: the more successful the old solutions were, the greater our compulsion to cling to them even as they fail.
    On the surface, the present looks like the recent past. Yes, technology changes, but this constant churn of new technology has long been part of the system.
    Make America Great Again is an explicit call to return to the solutions that worked in the past, specifically The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, which was characterized by these policies:
    1. The federal government is the problem, not the solution. The solution is to reduce the influence and financial footprint of the federal government.
    2. Deregulation of private industries, starting with finance. Loosen regulations to enable financial / market solutions, even if they’re disruptive.
    3. Focus on growth. Grow the economy by loosening up credit, drill baby drill, reducing regulatory burdens and taxes, etc.
    4. Pursue a muscular global policy of America First. No more wishy-washy playing nice: choose sides, but choose carefully because there will be consequences.
    5. It’s morning in America. We can get back on track by unleashing America’s native optimism and vigor.
    These solutions from the past are compelling because they delivered decades of growth. Of course reality is complicated, and it wasn’t just these policies by themselves that spawned decades of expansion. Demographics, the “peace dividend” and many other factors helped.
    And there were spots of bother: deregulation enabled the Savings and Loan debacle in which a third of the nation’s S&L associations closed as $180 billion went up in smoke, losses that cost taxpayers $132 billion in bailouts.
    Beneath the political rhetoric, these policies boil down to Keynesian stimulus which has been the de facto go-to policy “fix” for 60+ years: loosen credit, increase government borrowing and spending, encourage risk-taking and “animal spirits.” https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/what-if-solutions-that-worked-in

    NEW: Photos of Hunter and Joe Biden Meeting With Chinese Officials Emerge, Massive Cover-Up Exposed
    The National Archives finally released long sought-after pictures of Joe and Hunter Biden meeting with Chinese officials. The president has long insisted he never facilitated nor had any involvement in his troubled son’s business dealings. Yet, a series of photos taken during Joe Biden’s time as vice president paint a very different story. [IMAGE: Xi Meets Hunter]
    https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/12/24/new-scandalous-photos-of-hunter-and-joe-biden-meeting-with-xi-jinping-other-chinese-officials-emerge-n2183586

    Putin Reveals Biden Offered To Postpone Ukraine’s NATO Entry As Compromise
    The comments came in the context of a question over Trump’s reported peace plan and the idea of freezing the front lines. Putin described that such a plan is nothing new, and added the following per state media translation: “I know that the current President Biden spoke about this, it’s no secret, back in 2021. He proposed exactly this to me – to delay Ukraine’s admission into NATO by 10-15 years, because [Kiev] is not ready yet,” Putin said, referring to the midsummer meeting he had with the US leader in Switzerland.
    He stressed that no matter the timeline, Ukraine’s admission into NATO would be unacceptable “whether it’s in one year or ten years.”
    “We, too, are striving to end the conflict,” Putin added, but stressed that this should happen by achieving all of Moscow’s military and political objectives, according to RT. Toward this end, Putin during the Q&A proposed Slovakia as a ‘neutral’ potential host country for future peace talks. https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-reveals-biden-offered-postpone-ukraines-nato-entry-compromise

    #177850
    John Day
    Participant

    Biden Pledges More Arms To Ukraine After Christmas Strikes https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/biden-pledges-more-arms-ukraine-after-christmas-strikes

    Group publishes details about CIA mind control studies, Historic memos about brainwashing “Russian agents” and drugging US inmates with LSD have been put online
    Starting in the early 1950s, the CIA secretly searched for ways to control human behavior with drugs, including the then novel hallucinogen LSD, hypnosis, and extreme maltreatment, such as sensory deprivation.
    The experiments, including those done on unwitting subjects, largely stemmed from interest in anti-war sentiments expressed by US troops who fought in the Korean War and went through captivity…
    ..CIA Director Richard Helms and MKULTRA chief Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most of the original records in 1973 in what the Archive called “perhaps the most infamous cover-up in the Agency’s history.” …
    ..The Archive pointed the finger at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Company as the supplier of “tonnage quantities” of LSD to the CIA.
    It is “a history marked by near-total impunity at the institutional and individual levels for countless abuses committed across decades,” the group said. Some of the research was akin to what was previously done by “the Nazi doctors who were tried at Nuremberg.”
    ..The December 1974 expose of MKULTRA in the Times was penned by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. The veteran reporter has authored several explosive stories over the decades, most recently claiming that the US government blew up the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia and Germany in 2022. https://www.rt.com/news/609860-cia-mind-control-records/

    Trump’s nominee for top defence post thinks Middle East is ‘relatively unimportant’
    Elbridge Colby has said the US should stop focusing on the Middle East, and turn its military’s attention to China
    US President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will be nominating Elbridge Colby for the position of under secretary for defence policy, awarding the senior post to a former Trump official who has advocated for reducing American troops in the Middle East and against striking Iranian nuclear facilities…
    ..Colby, the grandson of former CIA director William Colby, served in the Pentagon during the previous Trump administration, where between 2017 and 2018 he was deputy assistant secretary for strategy and force development…
    ..”The United States must limit much more substantially its strategic engagement in the Middle East. This is both necessary and feasible,” Colby said… ..”As is evidenced by the experience of recent decades, large ground interventions do not help resolve this issue and almost certainly exacerbate the problem.” Colby has been a public opponent of the US-led invasion of Iraq and said that he has opposed every US intervention abroad since then – including the increasing US military support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/trumps-nominee-top-defence-post-thinks-middle-east-relatively-unimportant

    Buy Greenland, make Canada the 51st State, dominate Arctic mineral resources, right? Trump Wants to Buy Greenland—Described It as an ‘Absolute Necessity’ https://defconnews.com/2024/12/24/trump-wants-to-buy-greenland-described-it-as-an-absolute-necessity/

    Get the jokes? President-Elect Trump Posts Christmas Message To “Wonderful Soldiers of China”, “Governor Trudeau”, And Greenland https://www.zerohedge.com/political/president-elect-trump-posts-christmas-message-wonderful-soldiers-china-governor-trudeau

    #177851
    John Day
    Participant

    Israeli airstrike in Bekaa shakes ceasefire 29 days after it came into effect
    For the first time since the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah came into effect on Nov. 27, Israel breached the agreement deep inside Lebanese territory.
    In the early hours of Wednesday, an Israeli warplane struck the town of Taraya near Baalbek. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2584293/middle-east

    Israel kills five journalists in clearly marked press vehicle in Gaza
    Al-Quds Today staff were targeted outside a hospital, as number of media workers killed by Israeli forces exceeds 200 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-kills-five-journalists-press-vehicle-gaza

    Israel strikes Yemen’s Sanaa airport, Hodeidah power plant
    Israeli military attacks several sites, including airport in Yemen’s capital as the WHO chief boards a flight.
    The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he and his United Nations colleagues were preparing to board a plane at Sanaa airport when it came under Israeli bombardment. “One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge – just a few meters from where we were – and the runway were damaged,” he said in a post on X, adding that they were all safe.
    Tedros said the UN and WHO teams were in the country “to negotiate the release of UN staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in Yemen”. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/12/26/israel-strikes-yemens-sanaa-airport-other-key-sites-reports

    Syrian Christians Protest Presence Of Foreign Jihadists After Christmas Display Burned
    “We demand the rights of Christians,” the protesters chanted, many carrying crosses. Other slogans demanded a future role in the country for all Syrians, and that churches and the religious freedom of everyone must be protected.
    A regional source has described the initial Christmas tree burning which outraged Syria’s Christians as follows:
    “Video footage that circulated on social media on 23 December showed a large Christmas tree burning in Hama’s Suqaylabiyah – a Christian neighborhood. The tree was set ablaze on Monday by foreign militants under HTS’s command. Some reports said the militants were from Chechnya, while others said they were Uzbeki fighters.
    HTS deployed a military official to the scene of the burning to condemn the incident and vow punishment for those responsible.” https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/syrian-christians-protest-presence-foreign-jihadists-after-christmas-display-burned

    Clashes erupt in western Syria after locals ambush HTS fighters
    The ambush was reportedly carried out by former elements of the Syrian Arab Army, coming during an eruption of sectarian tensions across Syria https://thecradle.co/articles/clashes-erupt-in-western-syria-after-locals-ambush-hts-fighters

    #177852
    John Day
    Participant

    Survivor of Azerbaijani Airlines plane crash claims there was explosion when plane tried to land in Chechnya
    Subkhankul Rahimov claims pilots tried to land aircraft in Grozny, Chechnya 3 times in a row
    A survivor of Wednesday’s Azerbaijan Airlines crash said the plane’s pilots tried to land in Grozny, Chechnya three times, followed by an explosion outside the plane, according to an audio recording shared by Russian TV channel RT.
    Subkhankul Rahimov said that something exploded on the third landing attempt and that when he reached for his life jacket, he found a hole in it caused by shrapnel. He also said that he was hit by shrapnel after the explosion. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/survivor-of-azerbaijani-airlines-plane-crash-claims-there-was-explosion-when-plane-tried-to-land-in-chechnya/3434670

    The photo shows the outside skin of the plane having lots of holes with edges that curl in, as if hit by shrapnel from outside.
    We can’t be certain, but it’s likely that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was hit by shrapnel from a air defence system as it was in the vicinity of Grozny. There might have been a drone attack in the area as well. Crew made heroic attempt to save situation before the crash. https://x.com/carlbildt/status/1872028200727146925?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1872028200727146925%7Ctwgr%5E7ae8ab7f3338a826d67ffe2b0ebd7499f7eb23c2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2024%2F12%2Flinks-12-26-2024.html

    It just happened based on business modeling. Nobody made any decisions… McKinsey Agrees to Pay Another $650 Million to Avoid Trial Over U.S. Opioid Crisis https://cocotteminute.substack.com/p/mckinsey-agrees-to-pay-another-650

    US ramping up biological warfare presence in Africa — Russia’s top brass
    Major General Aleksey Rtishchev said that branches of the US National Naval Military Medical Center are stationed in Ghana and Djibouti where active work is carried out in natural disease foci, isolation and sequencing of pathogens. https://tass.com/defense/1892353

    Just how broadly does this actually apply? Ashkenazi Jews descend from 350 people, study finds
    ‘Bottleneck’ dates back 600 to 800 years, genome analysis shows; researcher says among population ‘everyone is a 30th cousin’
    A new (9/10/2014) study concludes that all Ashkenazi Jews can trace their ancestry to a “bottleneck” of just 350 individuals, dating back to between 600 and 800 years ago.
    Researchers analyzed the genomes of 128 Ashkenazi Jews and compared them to those of non-Jewish Europeans in order to determine which genetic markers are unique to Ashkenazi Jews. They found that the Ashkenazi Jews’ genetic similarities were so acute that one of the study’s researchers, Columbia professor Itsik Pe’er, told the Live Science website that among Ashkenazi Jews, “everyone is a 30th cousin.” …
    ..Ashkenazi Jews are known to have origins in the Levant, which Israel is smack dab in the middle of. But exactly who “European” Ashkenazi Jews are has long been debated. An analysis of the gene database shows that the original Ashkenazi Jews were about half European and half Middle Eastern. They lived in the medieval era, about 600 to 800 years ago, according to the analysis – and numbered just 350 or so people. “Our analysis shows that Ashkenazi Jewish medieval founders were ethnically admixed, with origins in Europe and in the Middle East, roughly in equal parts,” said Shai Carmi, a post-doctoral scientist. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ashkenazi-jews-descend-from-350-people-study-finds/

    #177853
    John Day
    Participant

    Meryl Nass MD, UN General Assembly Adopts Controversial Cybercrime Treaty Amid Criticism Over Censorship and Surveillance Risks/ from Reclaim the Net
    Another treaty from the UN system is adopted without a vote. More evidence that the US may want to exit this undemocratic system. https://merylnass.substack.com/p/un-general-assembly-adopts-controversial

    Vaccine Injury Claims Spiked 27x After COVID-19 Injection Rollout
    U.S. Government Accountability Office Report Exposes Critical Failures in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/vaccine-injury-claims-spiked-27x

    Mexico is the ancestral home of corn and corn genetic diversity. With Help From NAFTA 2.0, US Strikes Brutal Blow Against Mexican Food Sovereignty, Health and Global Biodiversity, by Nick Corbishley
    “Both the USMCA and this ruling issued by the trade dispute panel are designed primarily to protect the interests of transnational corporations.”
    It wasn’t even a close run thing: the panel’s three judges agreed with the US on all seven counts in the case. The panel has given Mexico 45 days to realign its policies with the ruling. Failure to do so could result in stiff penalties, including sanctions.
    As we’ve noted before, this case may be an important battle for Big Ag lobbies and biotech companies but it is an existential one for Mexico, for whom corn is the cornerstone not only of its cuisine and diet but also its culture.
    The dispute panel argues that Mexico’s provisions against GMO corn cannot be applied as they are not based on an adequate risk assessment, scientific evidence or relevant international standards. This is despite the mountains of evidence from peer-reviewed literature the Mexican government provided showing ample cause for concern about the risks of consuming GM corn and the residues of the herbicide glyphosate — most commonly known as Roundup — that often come with it.
    By contrast, as Timothy A Wise, author of Eating Tomorrow and senior adviser at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, documented in a recent piece for TruthDig, “when Mexico challenged the US to show that its GM corn is safe to eat in the far greater quantities and forms that Mexicans consume it, it received no response.” https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/12/with-help-of-usmca-biden-administration-strikes-decisive-blow-against-mexican-food-sovereignty-health-and-global-biodiversity.html

    Biotic-Pump Model co-originator, Physicist, Anastassia Makarieva, Information processing by natural ecosystems. They have a built-in program of climate stabilization and run it super efficiently
    The time is ripe to realize that Life also computes. Natural ecosystems out there in the sun perform calculations and process information.
    How can we estimate and understand this computing power of Life? Energy from the Sun comes to Earth in the form of discrete particles called photons. The average energy of solar photons is proportional to the temperature of the Sun, which is about TS = 6,000 degrees Kelvin. The temperature of the Earth is about TE = 300 degrees Kelvin. This means that the thermal photons emitted by the Earth into space are 20 times less energetic than the incoming solar photons.
    Imagine that we have a switch that randomly toggles between two possible states: on and off. To keep it in one state, we need to apply more energy than the energy of its chaotic thermal motion, which on Earth is approximately kTE (where k is the Boltzmann constant). High-energy solar photons with energy kTS provide this extra energy, enabling biological and ecological computations. A single solar photon has enough energy to turn the switch on or off nineteen times.
    In other words, absorbing solar energy allows the molecular memory cells (the “switches”) of Life to rise above the thermal chaos and perform computations…
    ..Assuming that every act of a molecular memory cell rising above the thermal chaos counts as one operation, we can estimate the rate of information processing by Life from the known rate of its consumption of solar energy. With the global mean efficiency of photosynthesis of about E ~ 0.5 % and the global mean flux of solar energy absorbed by the planetary surface of about F ~ 170 W/m2, we find that the flux of information processed by living cells is about (EF/kTE ) ~ 2 x 1020 operations per second per square meter.
    Compare this with a typical modern supercomputer, which consumes a hundred times more power per square meter but performs a billion times fewer operations per second…
    ..However, it is not only about computing power. The main question is WHAT is being computed? Why does Life need such enormous information processing power? What is written in these biological and ecological algorithms?
    In short, it is sustainability. Life computes how to persist over time, without running out of anything, without polluting anything, and maintaining favorable conditions for its own continuation… Life is a distributed system of microscopic computers (living cells) that cover the entire Earth, assessing environmental conditions and reacting immediately if something goes wrong…
    ..There are two conclusions to be drawn from this exercise in assessing Life’s information-processing capabilities. First, sustainability is a hugely complex task, requiring the processing of vast amounts of information. It is no surprise that our achievements in this area are zero. Second, there is no technical substitute for biotic regulation of the environment. If we disturb natural ecosystems beyond their self-repair point, we will not be able to stabilize the climate even if we stop all emissions. https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/information-processing-by-natural

    #177854
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Joining Canada and USA

    *No*

    This is something that the Bilderberg Group has planned to do. In the 90s they were trying to pry Quebec off of Canada, in preparation to join all of English speaking Canada to the US — it is a slow March towards one world government. This is the elites sneaking their representatives into Trump’s transition team. They have their agendas, and while Trump won’t deliberately adopt them, the tools of the elites will drop hints that go in the direction of all of the policies that they prefer, and any time Trump takes the bait, they will run with them as far as they can go. So, now they are pushing union with Canada, and digital IDs to combat voter fraud and illegal immigration.

    #177855
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    Elon Musk and his kids

    Yes, well, apparently he ignored his first five kids for the most part, and then decided to have a second family. I kind of wonder whether the last three may have been specifically because he wanted some brilliant children, as the relationship with the Neuralink executive appears to be solely about coparenting. Musk also is very comfortable with IVF. (Very convenient when his is not the body taking daily injections, having hormones messed with, risking multiple births, etc.)

    #177857
    those darned kids
    Participant

    czech

    #177858
    those darned kids
    Participant

    you know blinken and albright,
    pompeo and kerry,
    powell, kissinger,
    condoleezza and clinton.
    but do you recall,
    the most evil state sec of all?

    marco, the red-baitin’ nazi,
    had a very big ego,
    and if you had some oil,
    you would even see it glow.

    all of the other fascists,
    used to laugh and call him lame,
    they never let poor marco,
    play in any gran’ chess game.

    then one truly effed-up eve,
    bibi came to say,
    “marco with your nukes so white,
    won’t you melt the sky tonight”?

    then how the big blob loved him,
    as it shouted out with glee,
    marco the red-baitin’ nazi,
    you’ll go down with history!

    #177859
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Former Clinton adviser and Former California State Senator warns that the Democrat party is on the verge of collapse:”

    This was news with Lin(?) a major fundraiser for the DNC. When she voices issues with Kamala and direction, all the crybullies came out and violently attacked with all the same racist slurs they’re famous for. (She’s Asian-American, I didn’t look into it because it’s race and I don’t care.)

    So if your major movers, Ramero, Carville, Lin, others, all not only left but were drummed out, how do you survive that? How can you NOT become a new party? And so all the second-rate trend followers who only smell power like bloodhounds, like Cenk, Scarborough, MSNBC, all go too. Now many may not KNOW, be self-aware that they merely orbit fame and power, but it’s obvious to all us normal people. Their motion is a second indicator, although it hit the news first. People who are insiders are responsible, strategic people who keep their mouths shut unless they’re on the ending moves. They get reported now, when they’re at wit’s end and one step before leaving, like resigning and hoping the boss calls to negotiate.

    “Elon did in 19 days what others take a year to achieve. It’s unbelievable.”

    That can’t be right, we all know Americans are lazy, stupid and can’t do anything, and it’s always the worker’s not the managers’ fault. But here, just like every Honda factory, when different management hired Americans, somehow they get totally opposite results! Well, just a mystery, I guess. We’ll have to just keep giving managers bonuses and hope it get better.

    (We all sat down to a meeting and asked: “Should we give ourselves amazing bonuses this year, or shouldn’t we?” Well, you’ll be amazed to hear, we decided YES! Yes, I DID want more money instead of less. Live your best life now.)

    “Kevin O’Leary is headed to Mar-a-Lago to discuss Canada’s annexation!”

    I’m against, I don’t know why you’d do this. Again, this was ALL SET UP DECADES AGO. They are trying for the North American Union, with a new currency, $2/hr truckers from Mexico, AND NO CONSTITUTION. Nope. I’m not doing the WEF plan, no matter how you package it. Canada should be proud to be Canada, and fix their issues in the Canadian way. I forgot he was Canadian as well as a terrible person.

    Reminds me since we’re picking on Canada this week (we pick on America more or less every minute of every hour of every day), story about Canada: Retired ladies in Seattle, crowing about wonderful Canadian Health care, why don’t you all have that, etc. Asked: “So what are you doing here then?” “Well the prices are so high in Canada, what with PST, GST, all that. ”

    Uh-huh. THOSE ARE YOUR INSURANCE PREMIUMS, KAREN. THAT is how you get “Free” care. And worse, now you’re down here Seattle, Florida SHIRKING the health premiums and dumping them all on the poor working Canadian kidz back home. What a crumb!

    This is what us more Mises types always say, there is no “Free” health care. Vaccines are not “Free”. It takes “Work” to make things and “Work” is not free. And here is how they were paying those costs…or in their case, and increasing with more Canadians every hour – NOT paying them but retiring to low-cost Florida. Then complaining about it and picking on us for it. It’s not a bad thing, be my guest to do it; but don’t deny it though. Collect your PST from Tampa and mail it home, right?

    Anyway, 1st thing I can fight Trump on absolutely. No 51st Canada. Esp not if you’re taking Province that size.

    Speaking of, already reporting, “What is Trump doing?” “All his plans are failures” “He can’t think about any of these issues right.” Um, guys? Have trouble in the Bedroom? TRUMP ISN’T EVEN PRESIDENT YET, that might be premature? Like at least BECOME president, and I’ll still fight you it wasn’t done in the first two weeks, but at least any case might exist. As far as anyone can tell, he’s already done more as a private citizen than Biden has done as President. Now granted, Biden did nothing, but point’s the same. Hold your horses. Half of what he’s saying is mouthing off to position the negotiations. The other half is, he doesn’t know himself what he’ll do, nor is that odd, since he can’t really see the books yet. They’ll have to pick their way through competing plans, requirements, and interests.

    Please pile on. I will. But wait until ANYTHING happens first?

    “the president of the United States should be able to fire any person employed in the Executive Branch… at any time for any reason,”

    This has been fought over since Adams and there are two sides. Jefferson was firing the entire government after Adams (See “Hamilton” the musical) and vice-versa. Clearly that’s retarded, there’s infinity disruption, plus either no one will know their job OR they will be unemployed 4 out of every 8 years. So back when humans were NORMAL, they had an agreement that SOME positions are “Political” and the lower ones are all worker bees. The incoming is supposed to only fire the “Politicals”. Problem is, with that loophole the Derp State then seated a 2nd, secret, permanent government in the 7th floor “Executive Inter-agency” and locked out all the elected since Eisenhower (This is precisely what Kennedy said about “rooting them out”) which is where we are today. Knowing history: it’s a good thing. Try it.

    In theory should he? Yes. And he’d need to sell that not to law and Supreme Court, but to the PEOPLE as to WHY. But neither is likely to happen.

    Tesla Factories:
    there’s too much to add on this. Their 3D CAD design is dismal, which is how they’re theoretically creating them before they’re created. It ought to work, but it doesn’t. People who did this by hand with “Experience” are like 100x better at knowing you can’t get out that third bolt without jacking the engine mounts or taking off the Left-side wheel well or something so retarded they should sneak up on his house and beat him with a bag of oranges. They suck, suck, suck. Like the Tesla bumpers would fill with 100lbs of salt if they didn’t fall off. Boeing does the same. The “Process Engineering” is almost the whole game, but costs are never “Zero”, you’re just selling hopium to book your stock. Yes they’re sloppy from outsourcing, but WHY. And the new machines and robots are TERRIBLE from a whole new perspective. For instance, old tools are made of 100 tons of steel and can work all day. New ones are made of crepe paper and flex with every screw, and you spend 12 of every 24 hour chasing unreliable quality. When you add CNC on that, it gets WORSE not better, or I’ve never seen a computer before.

    I’m sure it can be done, but you better show me. I’ve heard the same blather for decades, then no one does the work. It’s Tesla so we know it’s bull.

    “Trump’s posts on Christmas Day were intentionally provocative, designed to push Americans to think bigger and to create an environment for deal-making..”

    When all is said and done, more is said than done. Looks like another big distraction incoming. Ideas: we still have a major deep secret base and prison in Greenland. See if any of Trump’s talk can be decoded on that basis. Like the “YMCA” at Gitmo.

    “• ‘Stop Donating To Wokepedia’ – Musk (RT)

    Uhhhh, the level of Wikipedia has gotten alarming. And not on the usual stuff, which is already dismal, biased, and unrepaired. Unrepentant. Movies are popping up in the digitizing age, great! Wikipedia entry: TOTAL FALSE NONSENSE about said movie. Like WHO was in it, what parts, the order of events, everything. Written by AI, but one that played 52 pick up with the data. Scrambled. It struck me it’s impossible this is the 1st posting of some, so AI then OVERWROTE a real human page with stark-raving nonsense? Post-truth era. Your brain will melt: there are no facts…just as the demonically possessed wanted.

    “The US government will “go de facto bankrupt” unless it reins in its rising debt, Elon Musk has warned.”

    This is Europe, Davos’ 100-year plan and goal. I can’t say they wrote this part, but given the goals and structures they did publicly write, the only way to get there is VIA this road. That’s why bribes, war, CO2, COVID, trying to get us into Russia … all the way back to the first “New World Order” Pappa Bush, via Baby Bush and Iraq, Rummy, all those Davos/WEF Neocons. Spend spend spend. Waste waste waste. And cap those oil wells! If we’re not broke, we won’t give up the Constitution. That was also Vietnam, WHY were we there when everything MacNamara said was known nonsense? Bankrupt the US get us off gold in ‘71. Bankers then rule. And so they did.

    Now bankrupt the US., the UNITED NATIONS rule, via the IMF, “Going direct”. No more banks at all, CBDCs on social credit from the top, no Wall Street Morgan/Sachs at all, which is – ta dah!!! Worldwide global Socialism. Fabian Socialists. “Slow” Socialism of 100 years where “You’ll own nothing and be happy”. Remember, Stalin vs Germany was the NATIONAL Socialists vs the INTERNATIONAL Socialists. That’s why USSR took eastern Europe and was in South America, to “Liberate the workers of the world, unite!” — Made sense at the time, I’m not arguing, but these are the INTERNATIONAL Socialists. The whole WORLD: Or Else.

    What must be done to succeed at that? The U.S and Russia must fall. Preferably in a mutual war destruction the same people have been attempting since 1945, giving nuclear bomb plans secrets straight out of FDRs office, to 1950 scares, Cuban Missile, ordering K to nuke off Hawaii in 1968, on and on and on and on and on to the Crazies in the Basement (Cheney) under Reagan, to taking over Russia, and now we’re out of every Nuclear treaty today. Same same same.

    But Russia did NOT fall. They got stronger. And the U.S. did NOT go bankrupt. That timeline got critically delayed after Hillary. Now it’s delayed again, with knowledge and power. Jacobean Woke army neutered. And we did NOT invade Russia with the Pentagon, leaving Davos an untouched damsel in ‘dis dress. Sorry, looks like you lose, but the game’s not technically over.

    Now what is the plan to NOT go bankrupt? Pretty sure they already have a financial system 2.0 idle and waiting. Crypto is part of that, but more on XRP, a non-crypto banking ledger already in use. They are going to run Milei’s plan, beta-tested by Wall Street in Argentina. Seems to work, very surprisingly. We also have astonishing untapped resources, like $2 Trillion in fake, unnecessary compliance, and most of all: when you destroy Europe, their capital flows will flee here. That’s why although reading Cullom and the stock overvaluation – true and worse every day – none of it may matter for a bit. EU is a $15T economy, take only 1/3rd of that in capital flight and we’re good for 8 years, get all the breathing room we want, and that’s likely.

    Doing that, we can get the space to remanufacture and be independent of international capital, like Russia just did.

    Gosh it takes a long time to say very simple things.

    “• Milei Unveils Ambitious Plan To Make Argentina Global Nuclear Energy Player (ZH) “

    As I said, like here. And why? Who is letting them do this when normally everybody would fight hammer and tongs and you’d search a week to see any pro-energy advocates (who surely exist)? Yeah, Wall St’s running interference in their “Experiment”. Again, why is RUBIO, that moron, secretary? Oh for deals, but NOT FOR ISRAEL, etc, which is where they’re looking. He speaks Spanish. His specialty is the Americas. Monroe Doctrine. What if we stopped buggering up for 150 years and instead were the capital infrastructure of South America, so they all got rich from us instead? Think there might be some profits and goodwill rub off on MAGA America then? You know why the migrants will go back home? Because Argentina and Columbia are fixed and better than us. Duh. “El Salvador”. ‘Nuff said.

    Burns me that Rubio is involved, but if it gets all South America and Argentina rich and working, so be it.

    “met with opposition from ranchers, environmentalists and Native American tribes. “

    Why do they hate native Americans and leftists so much?

    “Christians are horrible people because they believe terrible things. They’re also horrible because they don’t really believe those things. Real Christians are people who reject Christianity. They are still horrible.” Librarian of Celaeno

    Well, equal opportunity quotes.

    #177860
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    I’ve ranted and warned and decried the evils of AI many times on this forum, and here’s another salvo, written by someone else. AI “Agents” are being aimed to make you redundant and turn you into just another useless corpse. They’re workin’ at it hard, bro’. If they get to the finish line before you do then it’s lights out for the human race.

    They won’t succeed, of course, because in the hubristic ecstasy of their allegedly gargantuan personal intelligence, and aided by their super-duper-brainiac power of their ARTIFICIAL intelligence, they have overlooked the most fundamental Laws of Thermodynamics, forgotten the simple rules of basic arithmetic, and failed to recognize the most fundamental reality of all fundamental realities: the singularity of God.

    https://open.substack.com/pub/georgewebb/p/ai-agent-man-and-the-blood-at-his?r=ba3yw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

    #177861
    zerosum
    Participant

    Losing control.
    Out with the ineffective old.
    In with a new strategic map.
    The United States, not China, needs to have dominant influence over Greenland, Canada, Panama. Financial, military and political objectives. A negotiated settlement
    —————–
    Problem #1: Spending money that does not exists.
    The US government will “go de facto bankrupt” unless it reins in its rising debt, Elon Musk has warned.
    ———-
    Short-sighted policies, lack of energy security.
    ————-
    The Democratic party.
    Everything they have been saying and publishing is the opposite of reality.
    You’re all quite remarkably clueless and dishonest.
    Your party is in ruins because your policies are intolerable and often insane: censorship, war, gender lunacy, flooding the country with illegal immigrants
    These journalists — in fact, the whole elite intelligentsia across America — are gaslighting themselves, still pretending that they didn’t know what went on, a coup against their own country.
    For instance: can the CDC and other agencies of public health continue to lie about disastrous Covid-19 vaccines,
    ———–
    Next attempt.
    Bird flu narrative.
    Calling a terrifying pandemic without human to human transmission.
    ———–
    Interested Readers must judge/decide where the truth lies.
    https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/12/24/mollie-hemingway-matt-gaetz-n2405651
    • Mollie Hemingway Takes House Ethics Report on Matt Gaetz APART (Twitchy)
    https://ethics.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Committee-Report.pdf
    ADOPTED BY THE COMMITTEE ON ETHICS ON DECEMBER 10, 2024
    118TH CONGRESS, 2ND SESSION
    U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
    COMMITTEE ON ETHICS
    IN THE MATTER OF ALLEGATIONS RELATING TO
    REPRESENTATIVE MATT GAETZ
    December 23, 2024
    Mr. Guest from the Committee on Ethics, submitted the following
    REPORT
    with DISSENTING VIEWS
    ————

    #177862
    those darned kids
    Participant

    “Well the prices are so high in Canada, what with PST, GST, all that. ”

    Uh-huh. THOSE ARE YOUR INSURANCE PREMIUMS, KAREN.

    actually, the remnants of our “oligarch-free” health care system is funded with money we purchase (with “fees” and strings attached) from the toronto dominion bank et al. who simply type some digits and shuffle some “statements”, et ¡voila!, le money pour vous autres.

    wudda scam..

    the taxes smoosch the inflation the government inevitably creates.

    #177863
    kultsommer
    Participant

    Telling young people that college is the only path to economic prosperity basically reinforces the power of the PMC….

    Since when some third party has to tell a young person what to choose as a career that should be a private family matter at the most?
    Some sports, (apparently) selling your soul to entertainment industry, finance or “private enterprise” with talent to secure a grift-piggy-back do offer an exceptional financial success if one is after that only.

    #177864
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @DrD

    “Kevin O’Leary is headed to Mar-a-Lago to discuss Canada’s annexation!”

    I’m against, I don’t know why you’d do this. Again, this was ALL SET UP DECADES AGO. They are trying for the North American Union, with a new currency, $2/hr truckers from Mexico, AND NO CONSTITUTION. Nope. I’m not doing the WEF plan, no matter how you package it. Canada should be proud to be Canada, and fix their issues in the Canadian way. I forgot he was Canadian as well as a terrible person.

    Uh, oh. Doc, I think you nailed it. There is a VERY high probability that that is EXACTLY what they are up to: ….” a new currency, $2/hr truckers from Mexico, AND NO CONSTITUTION.” !

    O’Leary and Trump are like cloned peas in a pod. Those FOOLS!!

    #177865
    those darned kids
    Participant

    u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.! u.s.a.!

    see, only america* could stew** this up:

    #177866
    those darned kids
    Participant

    * my wife, “canada’s kinda the same”.

    kinda..

    canada’s more like too under control so the blender don’t blend so good.

    #177867
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Kings (and that ilk) deem themselves to be be immeasurably superior to their own Court Jesters, but in the final analysis it is the Jester who lives as a free man, enabled to both know and speak truth to power, while the King is forever trapped in a literally HATED job that no one in his right mind would ever want.

    The King is trapped in the false and doomed-to-failure role of being the guy who must lie with every word he speaks, and who must rule over everyone, in return for which those subjects HATE him for what he has done to them.

    That’s certainly not the job that I would care to choose, no matter how good the pay nor how many and beautiful were the dancing girls and other sychophants.

    I much prefer playing the fool.

    #177868
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    I’m not sure how many people have paid proper notice (hopefully a lot of people) but have any of you noticed how utterly IMPERIAL Trump is behaving? Maybe he’s just running off his mouth to rile folks up and improve his negotiating position, BUT I DON’T THINK SO. He has literally and explicitly threated to take over Canada, Greenland, Panama AND Cuba.

    That’s called conquest and colonialism, folks. It has this nasty little side effect of causing wars and injustice, and millions of needless deaths of completely innocent people, most of them CHILDREN!

    Please do not take this lightly.

    #177869
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    In considering how Trump might go about Making American Great Again I would direct attention to how it “became great” the first time.

    No one has done an exhaustively thorough body count, but it has to be in the range of many hundreds of millions.

    And that’s just the body count so far. Just think of what they could do with nukes and plagues!

    #177870
    those darned kids
    Participant

    **america, ¿will it blend?

    #177871
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Maybe some of you are averse to clicking links to unknown destinations, so I’ll just copy/paste the AI related article I earlier referenced. Here it is:

    Ilya Sutskever
    Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, OpenAI

    Illustration by TIME; reference image courtesy of Ilya Sutskever
    By Billy Perrigo
    September 7, 2023 7:00 AM EDT
    There is a precedent, according to Ilya Sutskever, for a less intelligent being ensuring that radically smarter and more powerful ones act in their interests. That precedent is the human baby. “We know that it’s possible,” says Sutskever, chief scientist at OpenAI. “Parents care very deeply about the well-being of their children. It can be done. How does this imprinting work?”

    The man pondering that question is one of the industry’s most celebrated technical minds. Before joining OpenAI as a founding member in 2015, Sutskever was already famous for breakthroughs that turbocharged the fields of computer vision and machine translation. Poaching him from Google was OpenAI’s earliest coup; without him, the company’s long list of innovations that followed would likely look very different. Sutskever’s name is listed on research papers that led to ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E, as well as dozens of others. But talk to Sutskever, and you quickly get the sense he feels his most important work is ahead of him.

    In July, OpenAI announced that Sutskever, 37, would be the co-lead of its new Superalignment team, which aims to solve the technical challenge of how to ensure superintelligent AI acts in the interests of humanity. The work is separate from, though parallel to, the company’s shorter-term research efforts into how to align weaker AI systems that exist today or in the near future.

    In Sutskever’s view, the task of understanding how to impress certain values onto significantly superhuman systems could not have higher stakes. “The upshot is, eventually AI systems will become very, very, very capable and powerful,” he says. “We will not be able to understand them. They’ll be much smarter than us. By that time it is absolutely critical that the imprinting is very strong, so they feel toward us the way we feel toward our babies.”

    #177872
    those darned kids
    Participant

    yep, seems like mr trump wants to outbibi mr bibi.

    not good.

    greater israel?

    ha! we gots AMERICA DOUBLEPLUS YUGE!

    doubleplus dumb is right. these marroons is gonna Make America History.

    MAH

    #177873
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    I do hope that others see and understand the utter madness in that article (and the mindset that it speaks of).

    They are almost explicitly stating that they want to create an AI that literally takes the place of God, so it better include the actual LOVE of humans.

    But Artificial Intelligence, regardless of how advanced, CANNOT experience actual love because it is just a machine (albeit very advanced.)

    We’re talking stark staring, barking mad. Suicidally mad. And yet our elites are dead set on doing just that. They ALL want to build that AI and trust our lives to it. What could go wrong, heh?

    God help us.

    #177874
    those darned kids
    Participant

    you wanna rule greenland.  meet FREDERIK X.  elon and donnie ain't takin' out this dude in cage fight.

    #177875
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    @ThoseDarnedKids

    Who’s the wholesomely handsome fellow in the shiny suit?

    #177876
    those darned kids
    Participant

    that’s FREDERIK X, crown prince of denmark, and thus, greenland.

    good luck takin’ on PRINCE HALMARK in a cage fight, mr trump!

    #177877
    those darned kids
    Participant

    i bet ms pelosi is roundin’ up a birth certificate for ol’ freddy x as we speak.

    ol’ america might just be in for a hostile takeover.

    i hope y’all like eatin’ fish.

    #177878
    D Benton Smith
    Participant

    Imma okay with being Danish, just as long as I don’t have to speak the language. The spoken words sound like hacking up a hairball while trying to eat mashed potatoes and marbles.

    #177879
    those darned kids
    Participant

    seems you needn’t worry as even the danes have rejected danish:

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