willem
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Move the right hand match so that it sits vertically extending upward from the left end of the left match, making the number “4”, which is the square of “2”.
Whatever you believe about Russia’s motivations for the SMO, it isn’t hard to imagine that Russian speakers in the Donbass and Crimea might have ample motivation for desiring independence from Ukraine after 2014. The following writeup by Gilbert Doctorow about Latvia makes it much easier to see why Ukrainian Russians might believe their future prospects were problematic if they remained part of Ukraine.
Latvia’s actions since 1991 are reminiscent of the early stages of Nazism experienced by certain ethnic groups in Eastern Europe in the 1930s and early 1940s. Slavs such as Russians, Czechs, and Poles were among those singled out for special treatment. We all know how that all ended.
I don’t think this is about redundancy or insurance against a possible loss. This is clearly intended to make an example of him to all those that might be tempted to dissent.
Having the Pentagon briefing material find its way into the public domain is a good thing, as it (further? again?) exposes the liars. Plus, in this case, as Larry Johnson has written, there is really nothing actionable in this released material, hence no real harm done to anyone but the liars caught with their pants down.
However, if what we have heard so far is true, Jack Texiera, who is being lauded from certain (mostly conservative) corners for leaking this material, probably deserves no such praise. His motive appears to have been purely private–wanting to impress his friends on what he thought was a private digital space. No grandiose motive of exposing lies, making us aware of government malfeasance, etc. Remember that these documents lurked almost completely unnoticed on that Discord server for a long time before SOMEONE ELSE ported them over to a more public forum. If you want to call someone a hero, the person who did THAT is my nomination.
Today’s latest from the NYT is that Russia has suffered a massive 200,000 killed and wounded in the Ukraine operation, obviously a vast exaggeration over anything reliable sources are reporting. I guess this is supposed to be a sop to those objecting to the failure of the proxy war, allowing it to be claimed that it hurt the Russians badly after all. We don’t yet have any think tank or IMF white papers on this topic, so it is still possible for claims like this to go unrebutted.
“CIA Pushed Twitter to Censor ‘Anti-Ukraine Narratives’”
This revelation gives us the open confirmation we needed that government censorship is not about SCIENCE, as was asserted during the rollout of the jabs. It is a broadly-based attempt to simply propagandize the public into adopting the government line. There is no “science” about one’s opinion of US support for Ukraine—you either think it’s good, or you don’t.
“US Says Putin Finally “Acknowledging Reality” after 300 Days of War (ZH)”
I’d say that Putin has exercised remarkable restraint in waiting so long to publicly acknowledge what Russia certainly knew long ago to be true.
@Redneck: Everything you say is true (and sad). Instead of commanding everyone to obey up front, it works best to get as much voluntary participation as possible. Then when you have enough of the public sucked in, you can put the hammer down on the rest much more easily.
With something like CDBC, they will start by offering people some kind of financial bonus or incentive to adopt it voluntarily. Then when enough people have adopted it for the “free money”, they will try to make cash quietly disappear. I think with the policing of speech, perhaps we are seeing something similar–a certain number of people will go along because what is being suppressed is something they WANT suppressed. It won’t be until the suppression mechanisms are fully in place and free speech has been almost exterminated that the hammer will come down on the holdouts, followed by the imposition of things most people won’t like. By then, most of the people who “adopted” this new “regime” voluntarily will probably never realize that their early compliance is what made it all possible.
You know the proposed “windfall profits” tax on the oil companies is about more than a money grab. Otherwise, why not put a “windfall profits” tax on the Defense Industry or Big Pharma? They too have benefited financially beyond all reason from these created crises.
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Nice insight by Dr.D: “But what I don’t understand is after 50 years of this we still don’t 1) Start local first where we have the most leverage and can develop talent and 2) Capture the nomination process and not the election process. That’s what they did to us, because that’s cheaper and what works. But they wander in griping about “the lesser of two evils”. Really? Then why didn’t you start the step before and get a not-evil? It’s essentially the same amount of work, just earlier.
Multinational Advertisers Begin Pulling Out of Twitter
@jb-hb said: “This is a declaration that [the corporations] exist first as political entities…Their openly stated prioritization is that they would rather disenfranchise you than sell to you.”I suspect that declaration was made when they supported the platform by advertising there in the first place. I suspect that very few gained market share by advertising there, or will lose it by leaving. Both their presence and their departure are virtue-signals.
Also, I understand and agree with most of what you’re saying about jobs. But there was one thing I found out during the 15-odd years I was doing contract (temporary) work. Amongst the permanent employees (“directs”) at all the facilities I worked at, the belief was that all of us were contractors because we couldn’t get on anywhere as directs. The reality was that virtually all of us liked being contract workers and had no desire to go “in-house.” We had a saying amongst ourselves: “The difference between us and the directs is that we KNOW we are temporary.”
There really is no such thing as “permanent” employment, especially nowadays. I only went direct again for the last 10 or 12 years of my career because I got tired of moving so often; if remote work had been a thing back then like it has now become, I’d have done it right up to the day of my retirement.
The thing I liked best about contract work is that it greatly simplified the relationship between employer and employee–you give me money, I do work, until one of us wants to end the arrangement. Since you are not a permanent employee, there are no other implied promises. My “performance evaluation” happens every day–since I am an “employee at will,” you can let me go anytime you feel I fall short of the mark. And I can let YOU go for the same reason.
Wouldn’t it be amusing if the combo Flu-Covid shot reduced uptake? Some people who might have been willing to get a flu shot may balk when they are told that they will be taking a Covid shot along with it.
Of course they do.
This year we are re-titling this campaign from “Russia-Russia-Russia” to “China-Russia-Iran”….
@jb-hb: Very interesting take on the “amnesty” article. I had to go back and read it again, and I now see what you’re suggesting.
I pulled the plug on my own job a bit earlier than I had planned (I’d had enough!), and thankfully I missed the big changes that came in the office when the virus hit. A few of my colleagues who were still there told me that virtually everyone not in a physical occupation was put onto remote work (I would have been one of those working remotely), and that lasted for almost two years. Nothing was ever said about requiring employees to get the jabs. Pretty amazing considering that the company in question is a major California public utility.
Incidentally, I worked under contract at various utilities on stints lasting anywhere from 1 to 3 years for over 15 years before taking a permanent job again toward the end of my career. It was a lot of moving around, and for the first 5 years I only saw my wife & daughter for a long weekend every 3 or 4 weeks. I understand why that wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice.
@kultsommer: WHAT triggered the sudden change in Emily Oster’s head and compel her to publicly “excuse herself”, which I think is her primary motive.
That may have been HER primary motive. But I wonder if articles like this are encouraged because public mood on the subject can be measured by watching the public reaction to them.
As a regular MSNBC pundit is calling for Elon Musk to be stripped of his citizenship for trying to reintroduce free speech protections to Twitter, the new owner is outraging blue checkers by suggesting a monthly charge for verified users.
Here’s an idea: How about a monthly charge for NON-verified users? This would cut the bots, trolls, and fake accounts down to zero.
@UpstateNYer: So sorry for your loss. It is especially difficult to deal with when sadness is competing with anger.
I started on a reply, but Dr. D pretty much covers all the bases. One point worth elaborating on is the idea of self-determination as expressed by the UN.
Dr. D has duly noted the shifting application of the “borders are sacred” concept and the “self determination” concept, which seem mutually exclusive.
It’s worth pointing out that Ukraine could have easily made a go of it as a nation, without giving Russia any reason to object, if it had simply included the Russian-speaking part of its population in its national vision. Instead (and without the history lesson, the simplest way to put it), Ukraine, feeling justified by ethnic hatred, pushed them away in the worst possible manner, leading to where we are today.
I don’t know if it was an even-numbered or odd-numbered day when the decision was made, but it is an amazing display of Western hypocrisy to support Ukraine in a war it ultimately brought on itself by its lack of tolerance for people very much like themselves culturally. After all, those same Western governments are force-feeding millions of migrants to their own citizenry–migrants coming from cultures most of which are vastly different from their own. And those governments are exhorting their own people to tolerate and even welcome those people.
So which principle are we standing for here?
I have come to accept the “Going, Going, Gone” narrative for the most part. That narrative and the “Overshoot” concept doesn’t square with the wonderful green futures the technocrats are peddling, if only everyone would get behind simply building more windmills, solar panels, and battery driven vehicles.
Anyone who can do high school math will quickly conclude that the amount of energy and material needed to deliver this wonderful green future doesn’t pencil out for the vast majority of a planet with anywhere close to 7 billion people. Even the people telling us all this do not act as if they believe it themselves.
My working theory at this point is that they are trying to get society to build them an Ark, one for which we will not be receiving tickets ourselves.
At least Noah built his Ark himself.
As the shortage of semiconductors continues, this is a provisional measure aimed at delivering cars to customers as quickly as possible,” Toyota said. A second smart key will be handed over “as soon as it is ready,” the statement adds. The global chip shortage that started during the Covid-19 pandemic has caused severe supply issues and delays with the automotive and other industries.
Lots of mixed messages about chips out there. I saw another article yesterday talking about a chip glut.
Toyota must need the wrong kind of chips.
Russian oil and gas revenues will drop by more than half in the coming years, from around $75 billion last year to less than $30 billion in 2030.
Maybe, maybe not. I think not–this year’s experience has already demonstrated that lower sales don’t necessarily equal lower revenues. But more importantly for Europe: What other countries will see their revenues drop between now and 2030? Perhaps the former customers who have been forced by their own sanctions to deindustrialize, and thus will no longer produce anything that can be traded?
I read Kunstler’s piece last night, and thought it was one of his better ones. It was more than usually perceptive, rather than just a repeat of his common refrain about how the bad guys are going to be brought to justice any day now.
He is one of the first I’ve seen speculate in print on something I have wondered about myself from time to time. This was in his post just ahead of the line Dr. D quoted about the WEF being a fantasy factory:
The bottlenecks of resources — energy, commodities, metals, all material things — plus the growing scarcity of real capital (as in representations of genuine wealth), guarantee that nothing organized at the gigantic scale will be able to continue — certainly not any global political administration.
@AFKTT: A sorry tale to be sure. Under similar circumstances, many have become increasingly reluctant to engage with those around them, which takes us nowhere good as a society. My experiences have not been nearly as bad, and even so, I must admit that I have been drifting into that “non-engagement” attitude myself.
Regarding the “end of energy”, a useful post was put up by a TAE community member a few weeks ago. (Whoever you are, please forgive me for failing to credit you properly.) In the post was a thought experiment where it was assumed that the planet was completely hollow and filled with oil. From there, assuming exponential growth of demand continuing on its present course, oil would run out in 300 years.
I thought this was elegantly simple, and pretty much removes the need to figure out where oil comes from or how much there is. Even if the planet is completely full of oil already, AND it is all economically recoverable, that puts an outside limit on just how far we as a civilization can go with oil.
“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” –Albert Allen Bartlett
Today I read of another study purporting to debunk Ivermectin as a Covid curative. I linked to this through an article on CNBC, of all places. I haven’t done any kind of a deep dive on it yet, but I’m sure the usual commentators will be diving into it really soon now:
I’ve noticed in the last few days that the legacy media and the “official authorities” have been taking another run against IVM.
Russia Says Kyiv Preparing False Flag “Dirty Bomb” Detonation In Ukraine
Another poorly-thought-out false flag, in that Russia has the least motivation of any of the players to commit such acts. Shelling their own nuclear station at Zap, taking out a dam that would flood areas they already control, now a dirty bomb.
Building a device that will create an actual nuclear explosion, as in “fission”, is technically difficult and very expensive, and few nations have the resources to even create the bomb-grade material needed. But building a dirty bomb is pretty easy, since all you need is a conventional explosive and any nuclear waste material you can get your hands on.
Dirty bombs are the weapon of poorly-resourced, underfunded terrorists, not nations that have already harnessed the technology of the atom. If Russia wanted to haul out the nuclear material, they have the means at hand without resorting to this low-tech crude method.
Not to be forgotten is that Russia, of all countries, know exactly what happens when that nasty stuff gets spread around the countryside–you essentially have to fence the environs off for good. That area around Pripyat north of Kiev is a perfect example–Chernobyl may eventually be taken apart and cleaned up, but scrubbing the surrounding countryside clean just isn’t going to happen.
Alexander Mercouris mentioned in his piece yesterday that the mayor of Mykolaev had ordered a complete evacuation of the city, and advised citizens not to return until “the war is over.” A pretty strange order if Ukraine believes it will be advancing south, rather than retreating from the advancing Russians. Since Russia presumably has aspirations of ownership for the areas being mentioned, where is the motive?
BTW, you would think Ukraine, if they are the ones scheming this, would also understand that, and restrain themselves accordingly. But I guess the other players don’t care.
Fred Reed paints a pretty interesting if stark picture of what nuclear war would look like. He makes the point that there need not be wholesale destruction to take the country down:
“The Middle Class Is Dying! 50% of All American Workers Made Less than $3,133 a Month Last Year”
Not saying all is awesome with the average American worker, but you have to read these figures correctly.
$3133/mo is the number for EACH WORKER. We know this because the data is coming from the Social Security Administration, which tallies this on a per-worker basis, not a per-household basis. Now consider that many workers live in two-income households—that is how they are getting by.
The average rent for a single family home may be $2450/mo. But how about apartments? And again, very few people are living on the difference between $3133 and $2450–refer to the two-income household above. Also consider that many live not in single family homes, but in apartments, especially in the city. And a not inconsiderable number are not paying rent at all–they own their homes.
Russian Language Should Become Extinct in Ukraine
13% of the US population speaks Spanish as their first language. Should Spanish become extinct in the US? (a rhetorical question)
EU Wants to Use Frozen Russian Assets to Finance Ukraine
Perhaps this is to further an intended divorce of the Western financial system from the rest of the world, to serve as a necessary prelude to the planned implosion of the Western financial system. How interesting that this item surfaces just now, after the chatter has gotten serious about how the EU has to start tossing more in the Ukraine kitty after the expected GOP victory in the November elections in the US.
Iran is now getting sanctioned for selling drones to Russia, an act that is being denied by both Russia and Iran. More to the point is that even if it is true, it is laughable for the West to be sanctioning Iran for the same behavior they are themselves indulging in by supplying the other party to this military action (i.e., Ukraine). And the West isn’t even charging for most of what they are supplying.
@Michael Reid: I have Ecosophia on my RSS feed. I also thought that John Michael Greer piece was outstanding–one of the best I’ve read recently. He laid out things elegantly.
The CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, which would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school. pic.twitter.com/Ga0EJZIVbI
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 19, 2022
Interesting that on the right hand side of this tweet, under “Relevant People”, Tucker Carlson, blue-checked, is shown as “fully vaccinated” and with personal pronouns (I guess?) as “she/her”? WTF?
Anyone who wants to watch “The Real Anthony Fauci” can also find it on Bitchute, no registration required.
@chettt: Thanks for the George Friedman article yesterday. An interesting alternative take on the geopolitical situation.“Pfizer boss Albert Bourla throws his employees under the bus…”
All these people who get megabucks for “leading” their companies have actually internalized the fiction that it is because they are “adding value,” pushing up the stock price with financial tricks like buybacks or LBOs, etc., or promoting their company with clever PR. But, in the West at least, they never step up to the plate and say “the buck stops here”, taking the responsibility for the failures of their companies.
In places like Japan they at least have the dignity to apologize deeply and resign. Here they have no concept of the real reason they get the big bucks.
“Trudeau’s arbitrary 30% fertilizer emission reduction target would ONLY REDUCE EMISSIONS BY 0.00028%!…Why is our government jeopardizing food supply for meager gains?”
Because the bans on fertilizer are not really about emissions, although that is how they are characterizing them. What the fertilizer ban is really about is limiting the consumption of natural gas used in its manufacture.
@aspnaz: “The USA is spending money but not losing people, so it can keep doing this fight as long as the USD exists…”
I believe you put your finger on something important there. Another good motive for the other global players to want to dethrone the USD.
@Polemos; Long and thoughtful post, thank you.
@aspnaz: I agree, esp. about China and Taiwan. I have been married to a Taiwanese woman for over 40 years now, and we have spent months at a time in Taiwan off and on over the years. I am always treated quite well and have no difficulty getting around and doing things. But despite seeing the occasional Westerner, there is always a feeling of being an outsider.
