When I was in university, one of my friends offered to buy me lunch,and have some beers with me on a slow Tuesday afternoon. I was a Sophomore at the time, as I recall, and we went to Hungry Charlies and I had this enormous Turkey Grinder and we split a pitcher of beer. Good times. We then went back to the dorm.

He then went and proceeded to pull out his bag of weed, claiming that it was home grown and very weak. He didn’t smoke any, but I was all good for it. I smoked up the entire bag, with no effects. He didn’t and just chuckled.

I turned out to be parsley and he wanted to experiment on me to see if he could get me horny.

It didn’t work.

It also didn’t smoke bad either, as I recall.

Anyways, I have a history of people trying to get me to become horny. Mostly girls. And of them, if I were just a little bit more aware, I would of had a much more interesting time growing up.

But I was a clueless as you could be, and it is only now that I look back at what transpired and what could have been. It’s called “Life”.

Sigh.

Todays…

Taiwan Ammunition Dump DETONATES

World Hal Turner 24 July 2023

A gigantic explosion has taken place at the Hsiang Feng military base on Taiwan.   DPP Authorities are already describing this as “Chinese Sabotage in advance of invasion.”

The situation is volatile.  A significant number of people are said to be dead and injured.

Finger pointing (in public) at China is not subsiding.

This ammunition dump was THE primary ammo supply for Taiwan military.   

If China were to invade now, Taiwan could not fight for longer than a week before running out of ammo and losing.

In the capital city of Taipei, people are TERRIFIED and streets are LITERALLY empty; as if an air raid is taking place:

Biden and his economy

Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes said Friday he was “amazed” by the administration’s rhetoric on the economy.

“A year ago, Joe Biden was calling himself the deficit cutter, the deficit slasher. This year, two and a half times the deficit is what it was a year ago,” he told “America’s Newsroom.”

“He says he’s bringing down inflation, still twice what it was when he came into office and those prices are not coming down, just the rate of increase is coming down. People’s credit card debt, where is that? Record high. Business investment is not what it should be, headwinds overseas.”

“What kind of world does he think he’s living in?”

The president delivered a full-throated defense of Bidenomics , claiming credit for bringing down inflation, slashing the federal budget by $1.7 trillion and creating 13 million new jobs.

In June, Biden made the same claim about cutting the deficit by $1.7 trillion, which The Washington Post rated “highly misleading.”

Voters also have their doubts; Biden had a 60% disapproval rating on the economy in Fox News’ June poll, which was a 7% improvement from the prior year.

Forbes believes Biden will not be the Democratic nominee

in 2024 and argued his record on the economy is one of the main reasons.

“People feel the institution in this country [they] can’t trust anymore. And both sides, you see that feeling, which is why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is getting real traction. Who would have thought of that a year ago?”

Former economic adviser to President Trump Steve Moore told “The Faulkner Focus” Friday that the Biden economy is not working for many Americans.

“The people that have really been the victims of the Biden policies have been middle-class Americans,” he explained.

“Inflation is coming down, no question about it. It was 9% this time last summer. It’s down to a little over 3% now, which is good news. But guess what? That huge inflation that we saw in the first two and a half years of Biden’s presidency is now baked in the cake. In other words, if you go to the grocery store, or you go to get your gas fill up, or you buy an airline ticket or buy meat, all of those things on average are up 15 and a half percent. And that’s going to continue as we continue to have this inflation.”

Moore continued, “wages over that same time period for middle-class families are up roughly 12%. So the math here isn’t difficult, a 15 and a half percent increase in inflation, a 12% increase in wages means people are falling behind, and they’re feeling it.”

The economist noted inflation is also affecting those near retirement age.

“Who do you think gets hurt the most by inflation? People who have spent their whole lifetime building up their savings. So we estimate, for example, that the average 401(k) plan has lost about 40 or $50,000 in its purchasing power because of the high inflation and the fact that the market had not done so well,” Moore said. “The stock market is doing better now, thank God. But it’s really difficult for people now to just retire on Social Security.”

U.S. Economy To Reach Hyperinflation if BRICS Becomes Global Currency

The U.S. dollar stands at the crossroads of a new financial order as the BRICS alliance is looking to launch a new currency.

The present objective of BRICS is to dethrone the U.S. dollar and make the new currency the world’s reserve status.

BRICS is advancing in its mission to challenge the U.S. dollar by convincing developing countries to end reliance on the greenback.

The bloc remains successful as close to 41 countries have expressed interest to trade in the new BRICS currency.

The development could put a strain on the U.S. economy as the greenback would have no means to fund its deficit. While the debt ceiling crisis is yet to be resolved, the burden of a ‘BRICS currency success’ will take a toll on the American economy.

Heritage Foundation economist E. J. Antoni warned that the U.S. dollar is on the brink of losing its reserve currency status. Antoni explained that if developing countries ditch the dollar and trade in BRICS currency, the debt ceiling crisis could worsen.

The economist rang the warning bells saying that if America fails to fund its deficit, seven decades of deficits could flood the U.S. economy. He said that if such a situation arises, the U.S. economy might fall into hyperinflation where prices of all commodities would skyrocket.

“Losing reserve currency status would mean 70 years of deficits flooding back to the U.S. All competing with existing dollars held domestically to buy goods and services. That’s a hyperinflation scenario. It also means we could no longer export inflation abroad. So we’d bear the FULL COST of past and future inflation.

Earth is the Most Difficult Planet to Incarnate Into | Near Death Experience Researcher David Suich

Why do Western elites feel so threatened by China that they’re willing to risk a world war to maintain “rules-based international order”?

If you belong to a class that writes the rules that favour you and enrich you thinking it could last forever you won’t want it to end. It is that simple. Just think about this. Prices of commodities are controlled by the west to be deflated at will to keep the rest of the world barely making a living Basically so that the west can literally keep the rest of the world as mere or near slaves and the west makes products that the rest of the world have to harvest an acre of land a year to afford a little radio!

From the end of colonialism after the 2nd world war in 1945 till 1995, the western so call “ rules based international order does just that. They wrote the rules, they police these rules and the judges are the 5 Anglo white Caucasian eyes. In 1945 after the world is burnt to ashes. The developing world could not do a thing. Crumbs off the western table kept us alive.

But bit by bit starting with the Japanese and the Germans. Then Oriental east, ASEAN, Indian subcontinent. Now Africa and Latin America are no longer in need to pay heed to these institutions and soon the hegemonic dollar too. China is one of the enabler BRICS is collectively responsible. Now the BRiCS plus some 40 nations are coming together to set its own rules or at least rejecting the western order.

Western elites clearly don’t like this. But it needs to accept that cheating the world 50 years after stealing and plundering them for 300 years simply cannot go on. If you simply summarise this 350 years, 15% of mainly white Anglo Saxon people stole plunder, looted from the world and kept them impoverished and dilapidated while the western elites build grandeur castles. How can they not feel threatened? Of course they do but to the world it is good riddance.

What do you think will happen to Putin once all this is over and Russia is literally cut off from the world?

Nobody Knows

Its easy to talk about going Renewable but thats downright nonsense

Refining/Processing Plants in UK, US and Europe employ 160,000 People in Total . Thats $ 17 Billion a year in Paychecks

Thats $ 117 Billion a year Revenues

You really think they will keep quiet if they dont get enough Oil and are put out of business???

And Lets say you move to EVs

Who gives you the Palladium? Russia.

Who gives you the Batteries? China

Who gives you the Motors? China

You want to pay $ 65K for a EV Car or $ 261K for the same EV Car if you bypass China and Russia???

My Point is simply this

You cannot cut off Russia from the World

Russia has too much. Its not exactly Djibouti or Honduras

What is the most inappropriate experience you have had with a neighbor?

I have lobster traps stacked in my yard. Every spring, I set them out and around December, I bring them ashore and re-stack them. It’s been going on like that for years.

When the elderly lady next door passed away, the house was sold to a couple with addresses in NY and Conn. So, they moved to this small town and decided, we don’t like the looks of those traps.

I asked, what makes the difference? It’s a summer home, the traps are gone before you get here and you’re gone before I take them back up and stack them in the yard.

It didn’t matter, we ended up in court, everyone had their say and the judge was going to think it over.

Before he hit the gavel, my lawyer asked to make one more statement.

He said “your Honor, these folks bought a house, in a fishing village, on an island, on the coast of Maine. What in heck did they think was going to be next door?”

He decided in my favor right then.

How Bad is the Chinese Economy? Walk Through Shanghai Reveals Truth

How bad is the Chinese economy? We hear it everyday in the news, but what is the economic situation on the ground in China? In today’s video, I hit the streets of Shanghai and explore a local neighborhood seeing what life is like in China in 2023 and share my experiences of speaking with some Chinese youth about the future of the Chinese economy

NOPE

Italian Meatloaf

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 pound ground mild Italian sausage
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon basil
• 1/2 teaspoon parsley
• 1 egg, beaten
• 3/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
• 2 slices white bread, crumbled
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese, reserve 3/4 cup for topping
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup marinara sauce, plus 1/2 to 3/4 cup more for topping

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. In a small skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and sauté the onion and bell pepper for 3 to 4 minutes; remove from heat.
3. In a large bowl, add the meats, onion and bell pepper along with all remaining ingredients reserving 3/4 cup mozzarella cheese for topping. Mix very well. Place and mold the mixture in a baking dish of your choice.
4. Spoon 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the marinara sauce on top and spread around.
5. Bake for 50 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and top with the remaining cheese and sprinkle a little dry basil over the top.
7. Return to the oven for 10 more minutes. Make sure the meat is not pink before serving. Baking time will vary depending on the thickness of the loaf.

France under attack: the pawns are fighting in the streets of France, but the war is between France and the Anglo-American Empire.

[This article was published on Alex Krainer’s substack TrendCompass]

The government of French President Emmanuel Macron is under attack by the Anglo-American imperial establishment. The civil unrest that erupted across the nation was triggered by the 27 June 2023 Police killing of the 17-year old Nahel Merzouk (NM) in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. NM was driving a car without a driving license, failed to comply with police orders and for that he was shot point blank by two officers in full riot gear. NM was of Algerian origin. The next day, riots broke out in many cities across France: Paris, Marseille, Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble and also Brussels in Belgium. Some areas were left looking like war zones.

In fact, some of the riots did resemble low-intensity warfare. According to some reports, US weapons donated to Ukraine have found their way through black markets to the streets of French cities and into the hands of the protesters who used them in coordinated attacks on police and firefighters. Just on the night of Jun 30/July 1

, 41 police stations were attacked, 79 police officers injured, 2560 fires were set in the streets, 1360 cars and 234 buildings were burnt. The government deployed 45,000 police and gendarmes to bring the situation under control, but thus far, the rioting has continued with great intensity for five straight days, threatening to destabilize the nation.

President Emmanuel Macron is under increasing pressure, not only from the rioters and the opposition, but more ominously, also from his own Police forces and the military. Police Unions of France wrote to Macron threatening to revolt: “Today the police are in combat as we are at war. Tomorrow we will be in the resistance and the government should be aware of this.” Certain military circles appear ready to turn against Macron. General Pierre Villiers, who is apparently well respected among the French military commanders said

that the army should be loyal to the people, not to Emmanuel Macron.

Nothing is what it seems…

So far, the events may seem straightforward to understand at the levels of pawns opposed to one another in the streets of French cities: the abusive government of President Macron and its security apparatus is under attack by the people whose legitimate grievances went past the boiling point. From there, it’s easy to assume that Macron’s government even instigated the riots deliberately in order to crack down and tyrannize the people according to their plan. Heck, Macron is the Rothschilds’ errand boy and a loyal World Economic Forum young leader.

You’re either with us, or you’re against us.

All of that sounds plausible, but there’s a far broader context to this story. The present crisis draws root from the very strained relationship between French ruling elites and the Anglo-American imperial establishment, which spans centuries. A more thorough analysis of this relationship could fill many volumes but for now we’ll focus on just the more recent developments. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, President George W. Bush announced to the world that, “you are either with us, or you are against us.” He wasn’t just saying words: the empire was preparing to cement the unipolar global order, eliminate its rivals, establish full-spectrum dominance and launch its Project For The New American Century.

France has never accepted the role of a junior partner or unquestioning ally, let alone a vassal to the Anglo-American Empire. It has continued to be a pain in its side at critical junctures. Here are a few examples of the last two decades’ spats between the two sides:

2003: French opposition to US invasion of Iraq

In late 2002 and early 2003, the Administration of George W. Bush was working feverishly to secure its allies’ support for an invasion of Iraq. In February 2002, US State Secretary Colin Powell waved a vial of white powder at the UN Security Council, accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of possessing biological weapons of mass destruction. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin wasn’t impressed. In a searing speech he poured cold water on US case for war and called out Powell’s performance as dubious and unconvincing. A few weeks later, on 10 March 2003 President Jacques Chirac made it clear

that France would vote against any UN Resolution authorizing US attack on Iraq. In this, France would vote on the side of Russia and China (talk about foreshadowing).

2008: France opposes Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO

One of the most important projects of the Anglo-American empire over the past three decades has been to encircle Russia by absorbing all of her neighbors to the west and southwest into the NATO alliance. In several waves of eastward extensions, NATO added 14 new member states, moving more than 1,600 km toward Russia. Ukraine and Georgia were next: at the April 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, the alliance proclaimed the Bucharest Memorandum. Referencing Ukraine and Georgia, they explicitly declared that, “We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” While not yet a full-fledged member of the alliance’s integrated command, France was openly opposed to the resolution on the grounds that it would exacerbate the risk of war with Russia.

2019: Emmanuel Macron calls NATO a ‘brain-dead’ alliance

In an interview with The Economist

in October 2019 titled, “Emmanuel Macron warns Europe: NATO is becoming brain-dead,” French President warned European countries they can no longer rely on US-dominated military alliance (note, by now France was a full-fledged NATO member): “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” and declared that Europe needed to “wake up,” as it stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power, otherwise as Europeans, we’ll “no longer be in control of our destiny.” Worse, when asked whether he believed in the effectiveness of Article Five which provides that if one NATO member is attacked all would mobilize to defend it, Macron gave a convoluted, cryptic reply: “I don’t know, … what will Article Five mean tomorrow?”

But President Macron and his government would become still more problematic for the Anglo-American cabal with the escalation of conflict in Ukraine. Of all European leaders, Macron has spent the most time visiting with or speaking on the phone with his Russian counterpart; he sought to improve relations between Russia and France and he tried to influence other European nations to chart a more independent policy on the continent.

2022: Macron says Russia has legitimate security concerns

In an interview that aired on Saturday, 3 Dec. 2022 Macron urged the West

to take seriously Russia’s security concerns regarding NATO expansion near its border. He called for greater willingness to give Moscow the “guarantees” necessary for negotiations to be successful. He called them ‘essential’ if the West wants to get serious about talks and peaceful settlement. “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Macron added that, “One of the essential points we must address — as President Putin has always said — is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.” These comments elicited rage and disbelief among the Anglo-American allies and western media who accused the French President of being a pro-Kremlin stooge.

April 2023: Macron visits China, flirts with BRICS nations

Emmanuel Macron provoked even more rage and disbelief after his three day high-profile, red-carpet visit to China, from 6 through 8 April 2023. Western “national security experts” were so alarmed by this visit, they called the event

“one of the greatest blunders by a major European power since the end of the Cold war…” Indeed, it was a slap in the face to the Anglo-American establishment.

On 7 April 2023 President Macron visited the Sun Yat-Sen University

in South China’s Guangdong Province where he received an enthusiastic welcome. He delivered a speech on China-France ties and took questions from the students. There may have been a subtle message in the very venue chosen by his hosts. Sun Yat-Sen was a vocal critic of the British Imperial system and their foreign policy. In his book, “The Vital Problem of China,” Sun Yat-Sen wrote that,

“When England befriends another country, the purpose is not to maintain a cordial friendship for the sake of friendship but to utilize that country as a tool to fight a third country. When an enemy has been shorn of his power, he is turned into a friend, and the friend who has become strong, into an enemy. England always remains in a commanding position; she makes other countries fight her wars and she herself reaps the fruits of victory. She has been doing so for hundreds of years.”

[h/t Cynthia Chung

for highlighting this passage]

We shouldn’t be America’s vassals

Speaking to journalists on the return flight from Beijing, Macron said that, “Europe must resist pressure to become America’s followers…” that the “great risk” Europe faces is getting “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its own autonomy,” and that, “Europe had increased its dependence on US for weapons and energy and must focus on boosting its defense industries.” In referring to Ukraine, Macron said that it was, “a faraway country of which we know nothing…” But even this wasn’t as unforgivable as his swipe at the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”

While in China, Macron signed many deals expanding bilateral trade between France and China, many of which will be denominated in Chinese yuan. Already before Macron’s visit, in March 2023 French companies began to strike such deals, the first of which was the purchase of 65,000 metric tons of liquid natural gas settled in yuan. French leadership’s willingness to craft their own bilateral relations with Anglo-American Empire’s chief rival and bypassing the US dollar is simply unforgivable. But Macron would soon go farther: according to the newspaper L’Opinion, during last month’s telephone conversation, French President asked his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa to extend him an invitation to participate in the 15th BRICS Summit planned to be held in South Africa in late July/early August.

It’s about the two systems of governance…

It is important to keep in mind the broadest context of the current global conflict. As George Soros laid it out in his annual address to the World Economic Forum

in May 2021, it is the conflict between the two systems of governance. Soros mischaracterized them as “open societies” and “closed societies.” In reality, we’re witnessing the conflict between the western imperial colonial system and pretty much the whole rest of humanity.

The imperial system governance is controlled by the western occult oligarchy which, while it gives lip-service to the rule of law, freedom, democracy and human rights, in reality it consistently sows mayhem abroad and misery at home. Truth be told, the French ruling elites have also enjoyed the massive privileges of this system for centuries. However, they never accepted subservience to the Anglo-American establishment and always sought to plunder and exploit its colonies on their own terms.

Ukraine is some faraway place to you?

We don’t know yet whether France will indeed be invited to the upcoming BRICS Summit, but in the world where not being “with us” equals being “against us,” the Empire simply can’t tolerate the uppity independence of France. You think our military alliance is brain-dead? You don’t want to be our vassal? You dare to strike trade deals with China and trade in yuan? You want to seek peace with Russia? And Ukraine is some faraway place to you? Clearly, this is unacceptable and the Anglo-American establishment has had enough of France’s insubordination. It was time to teach France a lesson and bring her into line with the Anglo-American agenda.

AUKUS alliance: a stab in the back to France

The most recent sign of the Anglo-American cabal’s contempt for the French was the 2021 announcement of the AUKUS alliance between the US, UK and Australia. In 2016, France made a deal with Australia to supply 12 conventional submarines for her navy. The deal was worth $37 billion – a very substantial amount by any measure. French diplomacy celebrated it as the “contract of the century,” important not only for its sheer size and the strengthening of France’s relationship with Australia but also in terms of securing French strategic influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

But then, on Wednesday, 15 Sep. 2021 US President Joe Biden, UK PM Boris Johnson, and “that fellow down under,” as Biden addressed Australia’s then PM Scott Morrison, announced a “historic” security alliance between the US, Britain and Australia. Part of the deal included US and UK providing Australia with nuclear submarines and a significant transfer of US military technology.

With no prior consultations or warning, Britain, Australia and the US, otherwise well known for the high value they place on sanctity of contract, simply sidelined France, tore up her contract with Australia and threw French interests overboard provoking indignation and anger in France. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian referred to the AUKUS announcement as evidence of duplicity, treachery, and a stab in the back to France from her supposed allies and partners.

France recalled its ambassadors

to the United States and Australia and Le Drian stated that there was now a crisis of trust with the US. EU Council’s President Charles Michel also strongly criticized the AUKUS announcement, accusing the Anglo-American club of leaving Europe “out of the game in the Indo-Pacific region.” This was not the first massive humiliation dished out to France from the same “friendly” Anglo-American circles.

Haiti’s reparations: how the US punished France’s opposition to Iraq invasion

American diplomacy and secret services found it easy to punish France’s opposition to the Iraq invasion and the embarrassment that France’s Foreign Minister Dominic De Villepin inflicted on the US delegation in the UN Security Council in February of 2003.

Jean Bertrand Aristide had first become Haiti’s president in 1991, but was deposed in a military coup after less than eight months in office. He spent years in exile in the US before coming back to power again in 2000 elections, with the help of the US. His US liaison was the diplomat and CIA agent Luis Moreno. On 7 April 2003 Aristide suddenly started calling for colonial-era reparations from France (note, this was 18 days after the start of the US invasion of Iraq). The precise amount that Aristide was demanding was $21,685,135,571.48 – that sum represented the lower-end of the scale of estimated damage inflicted on Haiti by France.

Formerly known as Saint Domingue, Haiti was a French colony, supplying sugar, coffee and tobacco to much of Europe. It was a boon to French merchants, slave owners and financiers. But in 1791 Haiti’s slaves staged a successful rebellion and won their freedom. In 1801, when Napoleon sent a large armada to subjugate them again, they defeated his troops and in 1804 Haiti’s leaders declared independence.

But France wasn’t ready to give up Haiti. King Charles X sent another armada in 1825 offering to recognize Haiti’s independence, provided that Haiti’s government agreed to pay an extortionate tribute in the amount of 150 million gold Francs. How much money was that? In 1803, France agreed to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States for 80 million Francs – an area that was 77 times larger than Haiti. But Haiti’s choice was simple: pay up, or it’s war!

The French would have been able to impose a naval blockade on Haiti and entirely cut them off from global trade and payment systems. Haitians had no choice but to submit to French ultimatum. To pay the ransom, Haiti was forced to borrow the sums from French bankers and pay back the loans plus interest from the proceeds of their commodity exports. Incidentally, this was the beginning of the new model of colonialism based on financial debts rather than military occupation. That, essentially is the imperial model of governance plaguing humanity to this day.

Haiti’s tragic experience was the only time in history when freed slaves had to pay restitution to their former masters and borrow funds from them to meet the ransom payments. This is why Haiti’s humiliation was called the Double Debt: it took Haitians over 130 years to pay it back and doomed the nation to chronic austerity, underdevelopment and crushing poverty.

It also made Aristide’s demand for restitution legitimate and an absolute bombshell for France. His campaign grew bolder over time with banners, bumper-stickers, government adds and graffiti spread all around the country. Not only was Aristide demanding a very substantial amount of money from France in reparations, he also encouraged other former colonies to join his fight and demand their own reparations from France.

French government was stumped with this development which their Ambassador to Haiti Mr. Yves Gaudeul called explosive. He urged his government to open discussions with Haiti to diffuse the situation, but he was firmly rejected. Instead, France recalled Gaudeul and sent a less sympathetic Ambassador to Haiti, Mr. Thierry Burkard, who explained the situation in stark terms: “Algeria can perfectly make claims, as well as most of our colonies… There’s no end to it. It would have set a precedent that we would have been greatly blamed for.”

Thankfully for France, the problem disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Before dawn on 29 February 2004 Luis Moreno, that same US “diplomat” who helped bring Aristide to power in 2000, came to his residence flanked with security officials and demanded Aristide’s resignation. Mr. and Mrs. Aristide were simply abducted and flown out of the country on a US-chartered plane back into exile. Haiti’s new, western-backed leader, Gerard Latortue dropped the restitution demands and the whole messy affair was closed.

Even though Jean Bertrand Aristide had been in power since the beginning of 2001, his calls for reparations came more than two years later, seemingly out of nowhere, but soon after France’s snub to the US over the Iraq invasion. Aristide demanded reparations from France, but never from the United States which had occupied it, or held it in debt bondage since 1915, subjecting it to equally rapacious exploitation.

Even before military occupation, in December 1914, US Marines landed in Haiti’s capital, Port-Au-Prince, broke into Haiti’s National Bank and simply took some $500,000 worth of gold belonging to Haiti’s government. Within days, Haiti’s gold was in the vaults of New York banks. Still, Aristide apparently made no precise calculation of damages inflicted on Haiti by the United States.

Furthermore, in an email exchange between Aristide’s government legal counsel Ira Kurzban, and their international law advisor Gunther Handl, the latter advised Kurzban that “Haiti must convey to France,” that there are suitable opportunities “for washing France’s dirty laundry in public.” It’s almost as though the affair was about pressuring and embarrassing France rather than securing justice for Haiti.

That notion is confirmed by the simple fact that France’s problem disappeared only after US agents removed Aristide from power, rather than after earnest negotiations with Haiti’s representatives and France’s acceptance of some obligation to Haiti. This fact alone suggests that France yielded to the United States in some backroom deal, not to Haiti. Perhaps France dropped its challenge to the New American Century and its full-spectrum dominance, and pledged her allegiance to the hegemon.

In 1966 under President Charles de Gaulle, France removed all her troops from NATO’s integrated military command and asked all non-French NATO troops to leave France. In 2009, only a few years after the Haiti affair (plus the destabilizing 2005 riots for a good measure), France once more became a full-fledged member of the North Atlantic alliance. But everyone did not live happily ever after and the relations with France remained difficult.

The Damocles’ sword of France’s colonial past

The Damocles’ sword of France’s ugly colonial past (though no more ugly than that of Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Great Britain or Germany), was brought up again in November 2022 when Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni appeared on Italian channel 7

airing some of France’s particularly ugly-looking colonial dirty laundry. She showed the Italian public two exhibits: a CFA Franc banknote and a photo of a child working in a gold mine in Burkina Faso: “This is called the CFA franc. It is the colonial currency that France prints for 14 African nations, to which it applies seigniorage and by virtue of which it exploits the resources of these nations…“

Meloni claimed that thanks to the CFA Franc, 50% of everything that Burkina Faso exports ends up in the French treasury. In addition to being the Prime Minister of Italy, Meloni is also a member of the powerful Aspen Institute. Headquartered in Washington, D. C., the institute is funded by some of the most powerful exponents of the Anglo-American establishment including the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Carnegie Corporation and Lumina Foundation and Meloni might be doing their bidding in antagonizing France.

In another jab at embarrassing France, in May 2022, the New York Times published a 19,000-words long special report about the French colonial abuse of Haiti. Titled, “The Ransom: How a French Bank Captured Haiti

,” the report reads almost as though it was the French who invented slavery and colonialism.

Preannouncing the attack on France

The most bizarre element that suggests that the current uprising in France is a planned destabilization attack by the Anglo American imperial cabal is the fact that it may have been preannounced in what appears to be their habitual modus operandi. Last month I had the privilege of participating in the Better Way Conference in Bath, organized by the World Council for Health. One of the speakers on my panel was Mr. Mark Devlin (@DJMarkDevlin

) a DJ who made it his challenge to study how the ruling establishment use popular culture and entertainment to disseminate propaganda and manipulate the masses.

One thing he picked up on is that they invariably preannounce their plans to the public through popular films and TV series. Mr. Devlin claimed there are literally hundreds of examples of this, and he shared one with us: a short clip from the American TV show, The Dead Zone which aired in 2005. The plot involved a Coronavirus contagion. The virus originated from China and caused high fever and respiratory infections, necessitated lockdowns, quarantines, wearing of masks, tracking and tracing of contacts, etc.

The clip was profoundly disturbing to see, but it suggested that Devlin was onto something important. As it happens, the case of riots in France also corroborates his hypothesis. Namely, in 2022 Netflix launched a film titled “Athena

” about a future ethnic civil war in France, which would erupt after the police killing of an Algerian youth. On 27 Jun 2023, French police killed an Algerian youth.

Seeking justice for Nahel by attacking Chinese tourists?

Another detail about the riots could have symbolic relevance: namely, Reuters reported that Chinese tourists were injured when rioters attacked a bus carrying a Chinese tour group in Marseille. The attack, which took place on Thursday, 29 June 2023 again reveals the cabal’s modus operandi. Recall, when the US and NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999, five U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munition

guided bombs hit the Chinese embassy, killing three Chinese state media journalists. One bomb might have gone astray and hit the embassy by accident, but five bombs were a message, as was (probably) last Thursday’s attack on Chinese tourists. It would be difficult to explain why rioters who had grievances against the French government and demanded Justice for the young Nahel Merzouk, thought they’d obtain that justice in attacking the Chinese.

What now?

Should we regard Emmanuel Macron and his government as the good guys in this saga? Will they be able to pacify the situation, or will it escalate? For my part, I’ve never been even slightly fond of Emmanuel Macron, but I believe that today France’s sovereignty is at stake, and it was Macron who invited Anglo-American cabal’s wrath. If France fights back, things will get ugly. Yes, they’ll have to crack down and yes, western media will accuse them of all the standard faults of tyranny, repression, intolerance and censorship.

If France capitulates, things will get uglier still and uglier for longer. But to defend France, the government of Emmanuel Macron will have to try to bring together all of France and this could prove their toughest challenge. Macron represents the French elites which do have much to answer to – not only to their colonial subjects but also to the French people whose country has been stolen from under them (though Macron is not the only one to blame for this).

In 1996, when I moved to Monaco, I recall that for several years in a row, France was winning the top spot as the country with the highest quality of life (I believe the quality of life surveys were conducted by Conde Nast or some such publication). Over the last 25 years however, quality of life in France has deteriorated precipitously. If France is to survive and lead Europe once more, the elites backing Macron will have to reconcile and make nice with the people.

With regards to her colonial past, France will at the very least need to set up a truth and reconciliation commission and offer an earnest apology and a helping hand to its former colonies to rise and develop as equal trading partners rather than simply territories to strip mine of their resources and subjugate in a cold and inhumane fashion.

The world should consider offering a helping hand to France, because with the present struggle, a very large opportunity has presented itself to humanity: to defeat the imperialistic system of governance that’s caused the unspeakable tragedies of our colonial past and its most powerful beneficiaries, the Anglo-American imperial establishment. If they succeed at taming France and making her their vassal, they will grow stronger.

If France prevails and joins humanity, the multipolar integrations and the other model of governance, the imperial cabal will suffer a crushing blow. I know where 99.9% of us stand and for my part, I would love to see Emmanuel Macron in South Africa at the end of this month, for once listening and earnestly seeking partnership and reconciliation with the world and securing France’s place as an equal in a new community of nations.

At what age did you learn about life? Why would someone in their late 40s and 50s have to be told how to eat or be happy?

I’ve been learning about life the whole time. The problem is that most of my first twenty years were completely fucked up by abusive nightmare parents who not only failed to teach me many important lessons, but also straight up lied to me about life, themselves, myself, other people, and everything, thus leaving me with much to unlearn.

But haha, when your parents fuck you up, then later in life you usually find some other horrible person to continue the abuse, and that’s what I did. So the last twenty years of my life were ruined by the woman who is now my ex-wife, who lied, cheated, stole, and fucking ruined me, leaving me homeless and too depressed to even try to get out of the ditch.

Then, flat broke, desperate, I tried to go get some help, make friends, find a job, and generally start over at fifty years old. I’ve been trying for almost four years now, and I’ve failed at everything. I’ve given up, honestly.

I’ve been trying to eat, but food stamps aren’t enough. The food bank gives random crap, and not much of it. So I’ve been hungry. I’ve been trying to eat cheap, but it seems like food prices have suddenly become comical, just as I’ve become broke and homeless. I’m just trying to buy simple, healthy groceries, and I can’t afford them. Also, it’s really hard to cook when you’re homeless. I don’t really know how to be poor; I’ve always had at least enough to eat well without worrying about affording decent food. Lately, I’ve been trying, or I was before it got so hot I gave up on cooking. So how to eat can become an issue in midlife for different reasons.

And maybe the worst part is seeing how shitty most people really are. Stupid, of course, but also greedy, selfish, thieving, and cruel. I guess I was used to getting some respect. But now, absolutely everyone treats me like shit, because I got fucked over and became homeless. Not sure how I’m supposed to be happy in this situation. Been trapped in absolute misery for three, four years now, really.

I mean, I know a thing or two, and I learn more every day. I am sorry to say that the lessons I’ve learned lately have been pretty bitter. This world is kind of a nasty place, and a lot of the people I’ve met lately are nasty, mean, shitty people. Good to know, I guess. Not really sure how I’m supposed to be happy in such a lousy world with such awful people, honestly. My current solution is to get as far from everyone as possible, but then I get lonely. I dunno man, can’t really believe this is my life at fifty years old, but I’m still here somehow, still learning horrible lessons. Still trying to figure out how to eat, how to be happy. Maybe I never will get it.

Arnold Ziffel Gets Revenge on Oliver Douglas – Green Acres – 1967

BREAKING NEWS: DRONE ATTACK AGAINST MOSCOW!

World Hal Turner 23 July 2023

This story publishes at 9:35 PM EDT.  Minutes ago, at about 9:28, at least three drones hit skyscrapers in Moscow, Russia.  Some damage was done but Russian air defenses are active above the city.

This is FLASH-Breaking News developing . . .

UPDATE 9:42 PM EDT —

Video is beginning to emerge from Moscow showing MORE THAN ONE skyscraper was apparently hit.

The Headquarters for the Russian Branch of Leroy Merlin, a French Home Improvement Company, has reportedly been struck.

UPDATE 9:57 PM EDT —

Moscow’s Komsomolsky Avenue close to Defense Ministry building closed after drone fragments fell on the area.

Multiple Roads near the Russian Ministry of Defense Building in Downtown Moscow have reportedly been Blocked by Police and Military Forces after claims that a Drone has been downed close to the MoD Building.

UPDATE 10:15 PM EDT —

Additional video of areas impacted in Moscow by drones brought down by Russian air defenses:

NOTE: Live updates terminated as of 10:22. It appears all is calm now and the attack is over.

Only in Australia

The United States is “fit to be tied”…

This short video is a must watch.

Meanwhile in the United States

OFFICIAL PUBLIC WARNING FROM RUSSIA — REPORT: Poland Intends to “Tear-Off” Parts of Ukraine and Belarus Under NATO Umbrella

World Hal Turner 21 July 2023

Reports are beginning to circulate claiming Poland intends to enter Ukraine with troops, to “grab” parts of Western Ukraine, but also to “Tear-off” part of Western Belarus, under the protection of the NATO umbrella.

While Russia __may__ be willing to allow Poland to take back parts of Ukraine that were formerly Poland, Belarus, it appears, would be “off-limits.”

Should Poland try to grab parts of Belarus, the region of Eastern Europe will likely immediately explode into full scale World War 3.  Poland seems ready to begin playing a VERY dangerous game.

Developing . . . . slowly

UPDATE 2:04 PM EDT —

President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused NATO member Poland of having territorial ambitions, and said any aggression against Russia’s neighbour and close ally Belarus would be considered an attack on Russia.

Moscow would react to any aggression against Belarus, which forms a loose “Union State” with Russia, “with all the means at our disposal” Putin told a meeting of his Security Council in televised remarks.

I figured that this would occur. 

Poland would recapture some of it's older territory pre-world war that is now considered "Ukraine". As this is mostly empty land, and they speak a dialect of Polish. 

There is this land in Belarus also, but that is part of Russia. Well, a very pro-Russian area.

If the Poles are being smart, they would ONLY seize Western Ukraine.

If the Poles are acting as a Proxy, they would attack Belarus.

Lots of shadow play here. Just keep your eyes open.
-MM  

The U.S. Wars Against Russia And China Have No Economic Logic Attached To Them

The U.S. politician Zbigniew Brzezinski was a hardliner with a (neo-)liberal core. He had a wide influence on U.S. policies:

Brzezinski is the author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, a 1997 book on geopolitics that was based on Mackinder’s Heartland Theory. Brzezinski argued that the US could retain global supremacy only if it prevented the emergence of a single power on the World-Island.

The Brzezinski Doctrine remains influential in the US foreign-policy establishment. His protégés, among them Ukrainian émigré Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, are a powerful voice in the US State Department.

Brzezinski had argued that without Ukraine, Russia would be unable to rule the Asian heartland and could not challenge U.S. power.

But I just learned via a Pepe Esobar essay about Henry Kissinger’s visit and a potential great power war with China, that Brezezinski had in later years changed his mind:

“The Grand Chessboard”, published in 1997, before the 9/11 era, argued that the US should rule over any peer competitor rising in Eurasia. Brzezinski did not live to see the living incarnation of his ultimate nightmare: a Russia-China strategic partnership. But already seven years ago – two years after Maidan in Kiev – at least he understood it was imperative to “realign the global power architecture”.

In a longer piece published in 2016 in American Interest, Brzezinski indeed argued for great power cooperation:

A constructive U.S. policy must be patiently guided by a long-range vision. It must seek outcomes that promote the gradual realization in Russia (probably post-Putin) that its only place as an influential world power is ultimately within Europe. China’s increasing role in the Middle East should reflect the reciprocal American and Chinese realization that a growing U.S.-PRC partnership in coping with the Middle Eastern crisis is an historically significant test of their ability to shape and enhance together wider global stability.

The alternative to a constructive vision, and especially the quest for a one-sided militarily and ideologically imposed outcome, can only result in prolonged and self-destructive futility.

For America, that could entail enduring conflict, fatigue, and conceivably even a demoralizing withdrawal to its pre-20th century isolationism.

The U.S. did not follow Brzezinski’s advice. It alienated China by launching an economic war against it and pushed the Ukraine into a proxy-war against Russia that was supposed to destroy Russia’s capabilities. In consequence Russia and China united their capabilities against their common new enemy, the United States of America. We will see during the next years if the consequences Brzezinski foretold for the U.S. under these circumstances will come into light.

It is interesting that the old rivals and political opponents Kissinger and Brzezinski have late in their lives come to the same conclusions.

As Stephen Roach in his take on Kissinger’s visit to China states:

For several years, Kissinger has expressed great concern over the worrisome state of the US-China relationship. As far back as late 2019, he warned that that the United States and China were already in the “foothills of a new cold war.” Given the trajectory of conflict escalation in the ensuing four years, there is a new urgency to his concerns. In the Chinese readout of this week’s meeting with [Defense Minister] Li Shangfu, Kissinger is reported to have said. “Neither the United States nor China can afford to treat the other as an adversary.  If the two countries go to war, it will not lead to any meaningful results for the two peoples.”

Opposition to the U.S. bi-partisan policy of economic warfare against China is now also coming from the bigwigs of the U.S. economy:

Leaders of the largest US chipmakers told Biden officials this week that the administration should study the impact of restrictions on exports to China and pause before implementing new ones, according to people familiar with their discussions.

During meetings in Washington on Monday, Intel Corp.’s Pat Gelsinger, Nvidia Corp.’s Jensen Huang and Qualcomm Inc.’s Cristiano Amon warned that export controls risk harming US leadership of the industry. The Biden officials listened to the presentations but didn’t make any commitments, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private.

Economic logic provides that the U.S. (and European) economy would be better off by avoiding a conflict with Russia and China. But, as Micheal Hudson explains, this now gets overwritten by national security preferences which have remarkable conseqences:

Instead of isolating Russia and China and making them dependent on U.S. economic control, U.S. unipolar diplomacy has isolated itself and its NATO satellites from the rest of the world – the Global Majority that is growing while NATO economies are rushing ahead along their Road to Deindustrialization. The remarkable thing is that while NATO warns of the “risk” of trade with Russia and China, it does not see its loss of industrial viability and economic sovereignty to the United States as a risk.

This is not what the “economic interpretation of history” would have forecast. Governments are expected to support their economy’s leading business interests. So we are brought back to the question of whether economic factors will determine the shape of world trade, investment and diplomacy. Is it really possible to create a set of post-economic NATO economies whose members will come to look much like the rapidly depopulating and de-industrializing Baltic states and post-Soviet Ukraine?

This would be a strange kind of “national security” indeed. In economic terms it seems that the U.S. and European strategy of self-isolation from the rest of the world is so massive and far-reaching an error that its effects are the equivalent of a world war.

The question is really why the U.S. is doing this harm to itself instead of following Brzezinski’s and Kissinger’s advice. As Yves Smith says in her preface to Hudson’s piece, it is a quite bizarre spectacle:

One of the subthemes of the latest offering from Michael Hudson on the bizarre spectacle of the US escalating against China is puzzlement that the West is not operating in its best interest. Lambert has been chewing over this conundrum too.

Perhaps it’s that they really do believe their propaganda, and still don’t recognize that the military and economic clout of the US/EU bloc on a relative basis isn’t anywhere near substantial enough for them to push the rest of the world around. But you think their self-delusion would have started to crack with the failure in their efforts to pressure many countries, such as India and South Africa, to side with the US and condemn Russia’s actions in Ukraine, and now with the supposedly superior US/NATO war machine not performing too well.

Another possibility is the so-called Iron Law of Institutions, that individuals and interests are operating to maximize their own position, with little/no concern to the impact on the system.

I have come to the conclusion that the main actors in this game, the Bindens, Blinkens, Sullivans and their bipartisan supporters, are driven by a blind ideology that has dismissed or replaced global realities with wishful thinking.

The failure of their sanctions against Russia should have demonstrated to them that the real word is by far not the one in which they believe to be living. They however are now repeating their errors by waging a similar war against China.

It will not end well for the people they are supposed to lead.

Posted by b on July 22, 2023 at 17:12 UTC | Permalink

Come in and meet the mrs…

Success Doesn’t Require Speed…It Requests Slowness

July 12, 2023

So many people today are in a rush to become successful.

They want to earn 7-figures in 12 months even though they have no marketable skills, no network, and no businesses acumen.

They want to build their dream body in 12 weeks even though they haven’t set foot in a gym in years and don’t really understand the current state of their physical body.

They want to magically find the man/woman of their dreams even though they themselves are completely undateable and have 0 social skills.

And I get it…

Human beings are inherently impatient.

But the great irony of success (in any area of life) is that an approach that is overly focused on speed will actually force you to go slower.

Trying to achieve too many things too quickly or changing too many aspects of yourself and personality in too short of a time span will detriment your results.

Don’t believe me?

Then let’s take a look at two (semi) hypothetical examples.

Example #1: Speedy Sam

Sam is just like everyone else.

He’s earning $50,000/year in a job that he doesn’t really like.

He isn’t fat, but he also isn’t in great shape and probably has 15–20 lbs. that he could lose.

He’s dating Sally from Accounting but their relationship is “meh” and he doesn’t feel the spark or connection that he’d really like.

After attending a personal growth conference (that he paid for on credit) he comes home and he’s on FIRE!

He’s ready to change his life and he’s ready to change it now.

So he makes a plan and decides to take action.

He decides that, starting tomorrow, he’s going to:

• Exercise 5 days a week for an hour a day
• Eat only whole foods
• Quit smoking cigarettes and marijuana
• Work for 5 hours on his side hustle
• Take Sally on a weekly date night and have sex everyday (instead of once a week)
• Meditate every day
• Journal for 30 minutes a day
• Read 60 minutes of personal growth literature
• Wake up at 5 a.m. (3 hours before he normally wakes up)

He sets lofty goals for himself and decides that he wants to build a multiple 6-figure business in 6 months, lose 15 lbs. of fat and gain 20 lbs. of muscle, become as “Zen” as a monk, and feel abundant joy on a daily basis.

He wakes up the next day before his alarm goes off and for the following 24 hours, everything is perfect.

He does everything he’s supposed to do and goes to bed smiling and happy with himself.

The next day, he wakes up on time again, this time much more groggy and fuzzy headed.

He still accomplishes all of his tasks for the day, but he’s beginning to feel more tired and burnt out than he has in a while.

On the third day, he hits the snooze button for “just a few minutes” and oversleeps by 2 hours. He spends the rest of the day beating himself up and feeling like crap for being such a lazy p.o.s. He doesn’t make it to the gym and eats a cookie at the office.

By day #4, he’s tired, drained, and wondering why in the hell he even wanted to change his life in the first place.

After the first week has gone by, he’s sore, grumpy, and stuck in a pit of self loathing because he’s “Such a loser” for not being able to stick to his goals.

He quickly reverts back to his old patterns of behavior for a few months before casually picking up a copy of Awaken the Giant Within, getting a huge dump of motivation and trying to do it all over again.

He goes on like this for YEARS!

Setting big goals, getting really intense, burning out quickly, and ultimately accomplishing nothing.

After more than a decade of this behavior, he’s no closer to the life of joy and freedom than when he first started.

In fact, he’s worse off than before because now he feels worse about himself AND his finances, health, and marriage have all deteriorated.

Speedy Sam has royally screwed himself over and paved the path to failure with his own good intentions.

Now let’s consider the inverse of this approach with Slow Steve.

Example #2: Slow Steve

Steve is very similar to Sam.

He’s slightly overweight, working a middle management job earning $50,000 a year and stuck in a relationship that isn’t all that inspiring.

Steve knows his life isn’t working and he decides to do something about it.

But after reading The Compound Effect and The Slight Edge, he realizes that the key to success is to slowly but surely take SMALL actions everyday towards his goals.

He sits down and looks at his life and realizes that two things are holding him back more than anything else.

1. His health – his energy levels suck and he’s always tired and feels incapable of working on a side hustle or going to the gym
2. His finances – He’s buried in debt, living paycheck to paycheck, and stuck in a rut of being unable to earn any more.

Steve knows that his life isn’t going to change overnight and so he creates a simple 12 month plan for himself to get unstuck.

But here’s the thing… His plan isn’t all that crazy or audacious.

In fact, it seems too simple to most people.

For the first month, Steve only makes three small commitments.

1. He’s going to walk for 30 minutes three times a week
2. He’s going to spend 45 minutes a day researching side hustles and new ways of earning extra money
3. He’s going to spend only 10% less on going out than he has been in previous months (a total savings of about $70)

At first, it doesn’t look like he’s making any progress. He loses only 2 lbs. during the first month, saves $70 in his War Chest, and narrows down his side hustle to 3 potential options.

Then, the next month, he adds on 3 new shifts.

1. He commits to going to the gym once a week and doing a full body workout
2. He commits to calling freelancers/small business owners in the 3 potential side hustles and asking them questions about what they do and how they do it.
3. He’s going to go on 2 dates with girlfriend and pay for them by spending less money on clothes.

Again, there aren’t many noticeable changes.

He loses a few more pounds of fat, boosts his energy levels by only 10%, and still isn’t earning any more money.

Slowly, but surely, he continues this trend over the following 12 months and by the time the year is over, he’s successfully:

• Training at the gym 4 days a week and eating an 80% whole foods diet
• Lost all of his excess body fat and gained 5 lbs. of muscle
• Started earning an extra $1,000 a month doing freelance writing for 60 minutes on the weekdays
• Improved his relationship and started consistently dating his (now) fiancee.

His life hasn’t changed all that much in 12 months.

He’s earning a little bit more money, he’s in better shape, his energy levels are higher, and his relationship is more connected.

But he isn’t a millionaire or fitness model and he doesn’t have some magical relationship where he screws like a rabbit everyday and never fights with his girl.

But he commits to continuing the process.

Another 12 months go by and another and another.

By the time that 5 years have passed, his life is COMPLETELY unrecognizable from the life he was living before.

He’s a lean, mean, fighting machine and weighs 185 lbs. with 8% bodyfat. He regularly competes in Jujitsu matches and Spartan Races, and he feels amazing.

He quit his corporate job and is earning $150,000/year as a marketing consultant and he’s in the process of self publishing his first book.

He’s happily married, feels deeply connected to his wife, and has a stellar sex life.

He put one foot in front of the other and changed everything.

Another 5 years go by and now, Steve is a world renowned marketer earning more than $3,000,000 a year. He has a budding personal brand, 3 best selling books, tens of thousands of dollars of passive income, and a career that he loves.

His body is a weapon and he’s in better shape than the guys that are 10 years younger than he is.

His relationship with his wife is a point of power in his life and spending time with her rejuvenates and inspires him (instead of draining him).

In other words… Steve is a badass.

But he didn’t get there overnight.

He did it in small steps that helped him prepare for HUGE leaps (like proposing, quitting his corporate job, and competing in his first physique show) .

Steve has changed his life SLOWLY.

But ironically… He changed faster than ANY of the other guys trying to rush their way to success.

Success takes time.

So chill out, trust the process, put one foot in front of the other, and eventually… You’ll get what you want.

Hope this helps

Stay Grounded,

I have installed another, newer, COMMENTS Feature – But a WARNING to all

World Hal Turner 23 July 2023

Hal Turner is learning. I didn't know that he did time in the Fed. Well, at least the food is better than the "Global" and mashed turnips that I had to endure, and he didn't have to do hard labor in the hot Arkansas sun like I had to. 

This is interesting. -MM

A  week ago, I shut down the comments feature beneath articles because it had become a never-ending stream of aggravation for me.  I’ve put a new comment feature in, but BE WARNED:

In June of 2009, the United States Attorney for Chicago had me arrested for an Editorial I wrote about a court ruling dealing with gun control, in Chicago.  The US Attorney said my Editorial was a “Threat” and argued to the courts that MY words were a “threat” because of YOU.

Yes, YOU!

They cited to the court, some of the comments made beneath web site articles, and described those comments as “violent” and “hate” and “extremist.”

I went on trial in December, 2009.  Hung Jury.    Went on trial a SECOND time in March, 2010, Hung Jury.

They put me on trial an astonishing THIRD time in August, 2010.  By that time, I was Bankrupt from being unable to do my radio show or be on the Internet (by court order) and had to get a public defender.   Big mistake.   I could have done a better job defending myself.

I LOST that third trial and was imprisoned for 33 months in federal prison — because of my READERS comments!

Oh, and those Readers . . .  NOT ONE of them donated money for my legal defense.  NOT ONE of them showed up at my trials.   NOT ONE of them even wrote to me in prison.  

I’m not going down that road again.   

You see, while it’s real easy for you to shout “freedom of speech”  it’s __ME__ they put in prison for what you write.

So here’s the deal.   The comment area is back and we’ll see how it goes.  BUT . . . if you post comments that a US Attorney can describe as “Violent” or “Hate” or “Extremist” or “Terroristic” then YOU are outta here. 

I have zero interest in any of that nonsense.  I do not advocate violence and will not have that on my site.  I do not advocate hatred, and will not have that on my site.  I do not abide extremism and will not have that on my site.

So watch what you post and watch carefully because I am watching; and my eye is keen to not being thrown in prison again over what YOU write.

If it’s a choice of your “freedom of speech” or my “freedom from prison” you lose.   Period.  Full stop.

This new comment module uses darker typeface, for those whose vision is less than stellar (like mine is now).

You can edit your postings.

It is much faster, very neat, and less cumbersome to follow than the old.

Lastly, this is not YOUR web site, it’s mine.  Do not use this comment area to post things UNRELATED to the story above just because YOU think the public should know this.   If YOU want to publish things that YOU think the public should know – then YOU go out and get YOUR OWN web site, build an audience on your own like I did, and then post what YOU think on YOUR site.  Not mine.

Oh, and about YOUR site, these comment areas are not for you to advertise YOUR site.  More than a few of you have zero interest in what appears on this page other than to repeatedly post links to YOUR site.   You are not going to use my site as a cheap, sneaky method for advertising your site.  

Enjoy —— but be very careful what you post.

“Scotty, Throw the Switch!” – Star Trek – 1968

Confessions Of The Son Of A Billionaire

July 7, 2023

How much is your father worth?

My father is worth just shy of $2 Billion liquid, and he’s on a rapid trajectory be worth significantly more.

What do you do for a living?

As for my current job, I work a generic IT position with a standard salary – nothing that will produce the kind of fortune my father’s work has.

What kind of car do you drive?

A 2014 Subaru Outback. Prior to that, a very-used ’98 Outback. Probably not the answer you were expecting!

As for my parents, the primary cars at each property are a Mercedes GLS and SL Roadster; they have lots of others, but nothing too fancy. Mostly old Chevy and Ford cars primarily driven by the various employees they have.

What do you do for work and why did you go into that field?

I’m a computer systems adminsitrator for a small company because it’s what I enjoy and it doesn’t require a large amount of non-immediate work. I didn’t inherit my dad’s strong ambition and drive, unfortunately.

Do you think having the trust fund played a role in your lack of ambition and drive?

The truth is that I didn’t know about the trust fund until I got married, so it had little influence over my upbringing. I knew that my parents were well-off and perhaps assumed that that would come to us someday, but nothing was explicitly stated about it as a kid. So if it did affect my ambition and drive, it was more subconscious. It’s certainly possible, though it didn’t affect my siblings. I’m more inclined to think of it being how I’m neurologically wired, just as my dad is wired to be a workaholic but less emotionally engaging. But it’s hard to say. I certainly do blame myself for my lack of sustained ambition, most of the time.

Do your nearest and dearest know your worth, potential or otherwise?

Well obviously my wife knows! We have one pair of friends who at least know my parents are very wealthy, since they’ve stayed with us at one of their properties. Everyone else (hopefully) assumes we have little more than the middle-class lifestyle that we provide for ourselves.

Wait so does your father not share his wealth with you?

We enjoy their material assets, get awesome gifts for Christmas, and each have a trust fund of $28K/year. But to have a comfortable life and income, we have to have our own jobs. For now, at least.

Did your father insist on a prenup for your wife to sign before marriage? 

They suggested a prenup, but it didn’t happen. My wife hates their wealth and wants no part in it so I’m not concerned about her trying to run away with it.

How is your relationship with your parents?

My relationship with them is complicated. I appreciate what they’ve provided, but the emotional connection has been poor. I wish I could feel closer to them, but I just don’t think they’re wired for that kind of relationship. Dad’s a workaholic, Mom’s a socialite, I’m the kid who didn’t do everything perfectly and felt like the pariah for a decade. Things are better now, but conversations are rarely more than business and small talk.

What kind of schools did you go to? Were your peers wealthy?

I went to a private school for grade school, a boarding school for high school, and then private university which I eventually dropped out of. Since the familial wealth grew as I did, the peer group evolved over time; but I never understood the extent of their or our worth until recently. My perspective was more than a bit off growing up.

At what point in your life did you realize that your parents are very, very rich?

Far later than I probably should have. I didn’t really realize just how out of touch I was until around 23 or 24. Granted, we were worth significantly less when I was younger, but still, many things that I took for granted were definitely not common.

Do you think you grew up in a bubble, so to speak, unaware of things those of more modest wealth take for granted? Any funny or embarrassing moments?

I think so. Generally I was more naïve than anything. I can’t think of any specifically funny moments, but there are a lot of things that I roll my eyes about where I was much more flippant about the price of things. I was just a kid who was excited by certain things, but I didn’t realize that talking about them so much was likely very awkward for others who were adults and yet had experienced far less. I remember asking the person who maintains some of our land what his favorite place to travel to was, and when he told me that he had never flown on a plane in his life, I suddenly realized that there was a very big difference in how we grew up. I felt quite awkward and guilty about that one.

Do your parents pressure you to want more? Make more money?

Well I do think that my anxiety comes from my dad wanting me to do better, in part. As I mentioned elsewhere, I dropped out of college; I did terribly in school – had high overall intelligence and tested well but just failed to put in the necessary sustained effort. I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD and the difference since starting treatment has been profound, but I wouldn’t dare tell my father that because a) he’s convinced that it’s a fake condition, and b) I doubt the diagnosis myself because it just feels like too convenient of an excuse. I’ve been taught that there’s no excuse for not succeeding other than not working hard enough, and by that metric, I’ve largely been a failure. My dad’s success and his hope for my success has been an enormous burden, but I think at this point he’s generally “given up” on me having the same drive as him.

Do you have other siblings?

I have siblings, and I get the feeling that they’ve been better-supported financially because they’ve lived their life much more in line with how my parents had planned.

What’s that -one thing- you never got as a kid?

A gaming console. Or as my dad affectionately referred to it, the “Super No-friend-o”. Somehow computer games didn’t fall into that purview though, so I had a top-end desktop and laptop anyway. Didn’t stop me from being obsessed with gaming; the PS2 was the first purchase I made when I started getting my own paycheck.

Seems like even though you had connections to wealth, it wasn’t used as a magic wand to get you shiny things all the time. Did you learn the value of money and earning, over just “having” money?

Sort of. We (my siblings and I) certainly didn’t have carte blanche, and I’m self-sufficient currently outside of a growing and accessible trust fund; but they have a “what’s mine is yours” mentality when it comes to enjoying their homes and possessions, which are plentiful. As we speak, my wife and I are staying in one of their massive homes for a stress-free weekend, and everything from the cars to the cook is at our disposal. These days I’ve never asked for something that they’ve said “no” to, but I’ve never tried to push the limits.

Are the other homes always “staffed” even if your family isn’t there, or is it a more “on-call” situation?

Some of the properties are quite large and require constant upkeep. One is on a farm and has a family living on the property – the husband and wife handle the land and home maintenance, respectively. Some of the properties are in city high-rises and have building staff to take care of them. Then they have their main guy (I have no idea what his official title is but he’s effectively a modern butler valet) who almost always travels with them and handles arrangements to keep their flow as uninterrupted as possible. He also lives in a home provided by my family, right next to one of their “hub” properties.

Do you have any “regular” friends now? What’s a Friday night like for you?

My wife and I are shut-ins and will spend most evenings just watching shows and playing video games together. When we meet up with friends, we meet at the pub or go to one of each others’ houses. A couple times we have taken some friends up to one of my parents’ properties, but only after we’ve come to know them quite well.

But generally, unless I’m with my parents at the time, I live a very standard middle-class lifestyle.

Thoughts on economics and/or politics? Libertarian free market, radical socialism, social democracy, liberal welfare state?

I generally lean conservative/libertarian on fiscal issues, which probably isn’t surprising.

Do you travel a lot ?

I did as a kid, less so now that I have my own income and my own job schedule. Starting around 12 or so, each spring break was spent on another Caribbean island and each summer was spent visiting another country or series of countries. My dad would increasingly joke that our hotels were picked by my mom Googling “Most expensive hotel in ____”; and those trips usually consisted of a private tour guide who would take us everywhere, get us behind velvet ropes at various museums, etc.

I didn’t appreciate how special those trips were as a kid, though I certainly did love them.

What games do you play?

We play special billionaire-only games that you wouldn’t have heard about.

Kidding. We just wrapped up Dishonored 2 and are currently replaying the Bioshock trilogy.

What type of hobbies do you have? 

Technology, media, games. I have an awesome home theater which is my biggest piece of personal extravagance.

Please elaborate

Well we squeezed it into our relatively normal house, but it’s a 150″ screen with a 4K projector, seating for eight, Atmos 7.2.4 sound, and a whole lot of soundproofing to keep it contained 😉

I was so close to convincing my dad to put an amazing theater into his newest home, but regrettably he decided that a massive wine cellar was the more prudent option. But at least I get to say that I have a better home theater than him 🙂 Not much that I can beat out the billionaire in, so I’ll take what I can get!

What’s your favorite pop tarts flavor?

Nothing beats brown sugar!

Do you actually eat pop tarts? I don’t just mean pop tarts either. Like, when I imagine rich people eating, I always think of private chefs, or at very least having someone else cook for them in some way. Do you ever just open up the panty and grab something like a box of cereal, or pop tarts, or ramen noodles? Or do you always have other people prepare food for you?

Well at the house where I’m staying at right now, there’s a pantry with Tostitos and Skippy peanut butter, a freezer with Eggos, and there are always a half-dozen Oscar Meyer wieners available for cooking. Of course there are other fancy snacks as well and our freezer is actually mostly full of the meat from a cow and pig we won at a rodeo auction last year, but sometimes you need a quick breakfast or midday snack and it’s not worth having a professional always handling it. Depends on the circumstances.

What’s a problem that billionaires have that we plebians do not?

Child-of-a-billionaire problems include rock-bottom self-esteem and endless guilt.

As for my parents, their problems are a lack of time and a loss of perspective. Worst has probably been their focus on maintaining a social appearance which has come at a significant cost in regards to their relationship with me and my siblings. They spend so much time these days trying to make our family seem perfect that they forget to do the actual things that keep a relationship strong.

Is this more keeping up with the Jones’s or just being scheduled too much to make time? Running an empire is hard work, I don’t envy then the drudgery.

My dad lives to work. He knows he doesn’t need any more money, but it’s when he’s working hard that he’s having the most fun. So for him, it’s just keeping busy. My mom, on the other hand, took our class status as an opportunity to become a major socialite. I participated in literally over a half-dozen debutante events. I felt like a trophy being paraded around, the illusion of our familial excellence masking the superficial relationships we had underneath.

Things are a bit better now since I confronted them on all of this a couple years ago, but still, our relationship is so-so at best and I expect the wealth was a catalyst in that.

You mention that you live a middle class life now and work in a normal job. Are you content with this or do you have plans to get independently wealthy?

I’m not a strong worker. There are things that I’d love to excel at, but I lack the patience and focus to accomplish them. There are many causes and industries which I look forward to financially supporting once I am afforded that lifestyle, but I would be content to just live out my life as I currently do (with more perks, of course) and leave the ambitions to those who are cut out for it.

Why do you work, particularly in mid-range IT? You could be doing anything. Does working feel like waste of time?

The trust is only $28,000/year for the time being. That’s the maximum non-taxable amount and is enough to provide a nice boost without letting us get away comfortably with doing nothing. That will change in the future, but for now, my parents strongly encourage a good work ethic and the value of earning your self-sufficiency. Not to scoff at how valuable that $28,000 has been, of course.

Are you any less miserable than we are?

I have emotional problems like everyone else. But I don’t have to worry about my paycheck, I don’t have to worry about my retirement, I don’t have to worry about supporting my child financially, I don’t have to worry about a medical crisis ruining our family… There are so many burdens that I simply won’t know. I wouldn’t dare make a claim to the same sadness and difficulties that many people deal with.

What are your thoughts on whether money can (or can’t) buy happiness? 

I once read that money can’t buy happiness but that it’s a good “unhappiness repellant”, and that seemed like a good way to describe it. There are a lot of things that can cause unhappiness that can be prevented with money: financial issues obviously, health-related crises, and lots of little things. Being able to skip the major airports and take a private jet instead bypasses a major headache!

But money can cause problems too. Especially extreme wealth.

Being given such an extreme amount of wealth creates the burden of managing that wealth properly. You don’t want to be the generation that loses what prior ones have worked so hard to provide. But you also want to do as much good as you can for the world while you have the opportunity.

Most importantly, I’m terrified about raising my kids well. I don’t want to raise spoiled brats, but I have no idea how to both acknowledge our extreme privilege and simultaneously impose a modest lifestyle. There are so many bad examples out there, and we only get one chance to raise them right.

What’s the best thing money can buy?

That’s a profound question to answer which can delve into the philosophical, so I’m just going to modify the question to “what’s your favorite thing your parents have bought?” to keep it simple and light. And to that, it’s almost impossible not to say the private jet. Not because of how comfortable it is, but because of the convenience and time-saving.

We don’t need to show up at the airport 90 minutes early, check our bags, wait in the security line, put our liquids in special containers within containers, then sprint to the gate desperately trying to reach it before the door closes. Instead, we literally drive the car onto the tarmac, let a crewmember carry in the luggage while we take a seat, and are in the air within 10 minutes. The crew is employed by us and is ready to go the moment we pull up. And our dog gets to sit in the leather seat next to us. Usually a meal is provided: shrimp caesar salads, a charcuterie board, a glass of wine, even a steak dinner if we request far enough in advance. And when we land, someone pulls our car around and meets us at on the runway, they put our luggage into the car, and we’re on the road – often much closer to the final destination than a larger airport is.

It is absolutely extravagant, but the reduction in stress and time is so significant that it’s one of their expenses that I absolutely think was worth it.

5 reasons to NOT live in the United States right now | Why the U.S. is broken

Confessions of a Man Who Got The Penuma Implant

June 27, 2023

First, some quick details:

• Surgery: January 2023
• Penuma XXL – this was right before the Penuma plus so I got the classic
• Pre-surgery Measurements:
• Flaccid: 3 inches length; 4 inches girth
• Erect: 6 inches Length; 6 inches girth
• Post-Surgery Measurements:
• Flaccid: 6 inches length; 6 inches girth
• Erect: 6.25 inches length; 7.5 inches (mid-shaft) to 8 inches (base) girth
• Male – 50’s

As you can tell from my stats – I was never big – but I was always a grower. At least I had that. I felt ok about my penis when I was erect but was very self-conscious whenever I was naked and flaccid. I like to be naked a lot. Pre-surgery – I always found myself tugging on my penis trying to get it to chub up a bit so it wasn’t so small. I went into this surgery knowing that the purpose is not to increase erect length – but to increase my flaccid length which is what I really wanted and got!

I had the procedure on a Saturday and stayed in the local hotel overnight. I live about an hour and a half from Dr office so transportation logistics were not an issue. I work from home and had no problem working on that Monday in my sweatpants at my desk. Went back on Tuesday and had my drain removed. Didn’t miss any work after that. I also didn’t need the pain killers. I still have them and am looking for a way to dispose of them safely.

I’m not going to lie – the first two months were tough at night with the nighttime erections. I woke up every hour and a half to two hours the first month. When I did wake up, I would immediately go to the bathroom and urinate. This immediately helped relieve the pressure so I could go back to sleep. I urinated in a red solo cup standing at the toilet the first couple of months – this helped alleviate cleaning the little bit of spray on the toilet that I had at first. The stream corrected itself quickly. OTC Melatonin was a saving grace. The second month got better over time. Was getting full night’s sleep by beginning of third month.

I wore the Uro Wrap as prescribed for the first month. Wearing the wrap at night actually seemed to add to the pressure of the implant and causing more pain than benefit. I asked Dr at my one month follow up if I could discontinue use and he allowed it, except I still had to wear at the gym which was not a problem. Did light workouts at the gym at 6 weeks. Heavier workouts after 8 weeks.

At two months I was able to get into my favorite pair of jeans. I think old fashioned boxers are the way to go – but when I want a pair of briefs the Wildman T series really are perfect. I’ve heard other guys here recommend them and they were right.

The question everyone asks regarding sex. Yes, it’s amazing with Penuma. I haven’t lost any sensation and women really love the extra girth. I do seem to last a little longer now – that’s a huge benefit too. And I love the confidence that comes with having a large penis. I tend to have sex a lot. I’m divorced and have sex with different women. I don’t feel the need to explain to them that I have an implant – but they would be able to tell I had one if I was totally flaccid. What I do is chub up a little before they get their hands on it and then they can’t tell. My full erection was always 90 degrees and that hasn’t changed. Condoms – regular condoms do not cut it anymore. I ordered the MyOne 64 and they were still too narrow. I then ordered the MySize 72 and they fit like a glove.

Everything about this experience has been amazing for me. It’s more than just the great sex, it’s the confidence and little things. At this point, day to day I don’t even know that I have an implant there. However, everyday I appreciate having it such as when I enjoy laying on the sofa in lose shorts and actually feel it lying against my leg. I also like having to now point my penis down one leg of my pants or the other which I’ve never had to do or had the ability to do.

Arnold Ziffel Gets Kicked Out of Hooterville Elementary – Green Acres – 1970

How could the US Navy compete against China in the Taiwan Strait?

The Taiwan strait is the wrong battleground today.

Let’s describe the geography first.

The Taiwan Straits is shallow, less than 100m deep in most places, other than a narrow strip of water between Penghu and Taiwan.

It is a no-go for submarine activity. So we can discount the USN’s submarine service.

Way back when Newt was Speaker, America could parade TWO (2) CBGs through the straits in tandem as a show of strength.

Today, the risk is considered too high, because mainland China has defacto control of the sea and airspace in and around Taiwan, and it is being exercised on a daily basis.

The only way to get into the ring is to massively militarize Taiwan, and Penghu with American troops and equipment, but that will be seen as an invasion of Chinese sovereign territory.

In the present, we have to zoom the map out a little, when it comes to Taiwan.

To contest the Taiwan straits, the USN must compete along the entire red dotted line of the 1st island chain, because the waters west of the line is firmly in the grasp of China.

That is a huge front, easily >10,000km, and even if every single combatant of the USN (which number about 200 after stripping away the heavy lift and coastal patrol elements) is activated, the firepower won’t be able to overwhelm Chinese defenses.

The principle is simple. In the Korean war, a chinese soldier had to get within touching distance to do damage to a US tank, whereas the US military had aircraft that could bomb Chinese supply lines hundreds of kilometers behind the front.

Today, the Chinese have the same capability as the Americans to maim from long distances. In some types of weaponry, the range and firepower exceed American equivalents. This means that any weapon system deployed by the the Americans that can hurt the Chinese will be within the Chinese kill zone.

In other words, this is no longer an unequal fight with America holding all the cards.

Any hostility will be paid in plenty of American blood. I won’t be surprised if the kill ratio favor the Chinese today, rather than the lopsided 1:x0 ratio of the Korean War.

This calculus does not change even if China were to face the combined might of Korea, Japan, the US, Nato and the Five Eyes.

Combined, they still won’t be able to hurt China more than they receive, because China can call on at least 10 million troops and have another 100m citizens dedicated to guaranteeing the logistics of war.

That is the status quo today.

Put another way, any attempt at hostility will require fight-to-the-death conviction, just to turn up at China’s doorstep.

---

As for show of force competition with the Chinese navy through operation tempo, the USN is already way behind the curve. European naval ships, and even the Canadian and US coast guards have to make 20–40,000km round trips just to “patrol” off the Chinese coast, because the USN is overextended, despite devoting 70 percent of active assets to Indopacom. With Russia in the mix, along with the rapid expansion and upgrading of the PLAN, the operational burden will only increase.

Good luck.

Green Acres clips – Oliver For State Senator

What are the protests in Hong Kong about? Why are they happening? Why is Beijing ignoring them? Is this a sign that the Chinese Communist Party is losing its grip on power?

HK riots and protests were a failed CIA Color Revolution attempt, it ended 3 years ago, it is not happening now.

China didn’t do anything to intervene openly, that is SOP standard operating procedure for Chinese government, 秋後算帳, they gathered all the evidences, passed a new National Security Law, waited 1–2 year and arrested all the rioters who didn’t escape. They are all in HK prisons now.

It is cleaning the bills after Autumn, 秋後算帳，the judgment day will always come, just not right away. They don’t forget nor forgive, they will absolutely come knocking. There is no rush, but they will come for you.

How did your life change after moving from a big city to the countryside?

Oh boy did it change!

The apartment building went section 8. Our income was such that our rent was going up by 2.5 times what we were paying. I jokingly said to the wife, for that we might as well have a mortgage.

So, long story short, we moved to my parents cottage for 9 months saving all the rent, picked an area where we would rent at lower cost while looking for a house to buy but in the next county because of lower prices, and lower taxes.

Within the year found a 3 bed, 2 bath on 7.5 acres.

Put in a bid, accepted.

So the big change, QUIET! No sirens, no traffic no horns honking. Within the first months, waking up to turkeys outside our bedroom window. A curious fox catching some sun on the front deck. Then only honking we heard were the geese going south in fall or north in spring.

Better yet was only paying for electric and phone.

Came with a wood stove, so heated with what fell during storms. Well for water, septic for sewage.

Been here for 27 years now, never going back to the city. Best financial decision we ever made.

Edit, wow, love the comments, so here’s a bit more.

My front yard

Australian In China Is SHOCKED What He Experienced

SITREP August 2023

In exactly one month, the fifteenth BRICS Summit will take place in Johannesburg, South Africa (August 22 to 24, 2023).

A significant number of nations, ahead of the reunion, already presented their candidacy for membership of the (current) BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) group.

Moreover, the group will most probably make an announcement about the gold-backed BRICS currency.

China & Russia have gold reserves FAR ABOVE their officially declared amounts.

For those interested, Dominic Frisby created on YouTube a 2022 update for China’s REAL amount of gold. In a nutshell, it’s a lot more than the ~ 8150 metric tons the US IS SUPPOSED to possess (a serious audit under the supervision of an international commission would be most interesting). China’s true gold reserve is estimated at 20 000 to 25 000 metric tons, not the much smaller officially declared 2092 metric tons.

It’s part of the ongoing DE-DOLLARIZATION process.

Also, since the last 10 years, for the same goal of de-dollarization, China concluded bilateral agreements for international trading usage of her currency, the Renminbi aka the Yuan.

China has always veiled the true amount of gold she possesses because it was tantamount of declaring war to the US.

Since she declared war to the US on Monday Feb 20, 2023 by a document published on the official website of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there is no need to be coy anymore concerning her true wealth.

The title of the document is “US hegemony & its perils” . It’s an axio-epistemo-political proclamation upholding the legitimacy of the war she is now waging against the US as the de facto leader of the KFC-AZAEL (Kakistocratic Feudal Conglomerate of the Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment).

Using the Chinese political lexicon, it’s the proclamation of intention by the Chinese rulers to restore the Mandate of Heaven : essentially Harmony & Justice at the level of the Heavenly Timeless Universal Principles.

This intention of restoring The Mandate of Heaven is made crystal clear and utterly pragmatic by 3 main inter-related projects :

*** The Global Security Initiative
*** The Global Development Initiative
*** The Global Civilization Initiative

There is no Civilization without Development.

And there is no Development without Security.

Those 3 inter-related initiatives are embodied by the BRI (the Belt & Road Initiative) and not forgetting the Agenda 2025 for acquiring and being excellent in the vital technological sectors.

The last 30 months have been filled with watersheds or at the very least extremely meaningful events and no one having a little bit of sensibility and a tad informed about the international events can escape the impression that we are going through an utter acceleration in the right direction of Universal History.

HERE ARE THE MAIN EVENTS I WISH TO UNDERLINE :

1- The Alaska/Anchorage China-US meeting (March 18 & 19, 2021). His Excellency State Councilor Yang Jiechi put US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to his rightful place, a more modest one compared to what Blinken probably had in his mind. Blinken, apparently, thought that he was speaking “from a position of strength” …

2- In February 2022, the renewed, at a much deeper closeness, SINO-RUSSIAN comprehensive strategic PARTNERSHIP of coordination for a New Era.

3- RUSSIA’S SPECIAL MILITARY OPERATION (SMO) IN UKRAINE started on Thursday Feb 24, 2022.

4- Two days later, on Saturday Feb 26, 2022, the imbecilic, foolish & idiotic Western ruling class seized the Russian assets .Russia being the first nuclear power; Russia having developed hypersonic missiles; Russia being a major provider of energy; commodities and food; Russia being a permanent member of the UNO Security Council; Russia being a nation known for her numerous military victories; Russia having a super-amped, patriotic, proud, rather cohesive population boasting a charismatic & efficient leader, the same for the last 2 decades. Do I need to add more ? By resorting to such an abysmally stupid act, the Western ruling class was shooting in its feet by utterly & definitively destroying the global trust in the Western financial system and more simply, destroying forever the global trust in the Western system, destroying without return the global trust in the word of the Western ruling class.

5- At the end of September 2022, the rogue state US/KFC-AZAEL, assisted by 2 vassal states (Sweden & Denmark) , by an act of international terrorism, destroyed the Nordstream II pipelines buried under the Baltic Sea.

According to Professor Braun interviewed by the German reporter and documentary films maker Dirk Pohlmann, the terrorists used a mini nuclear bomb. Nuke or no Nuke, the pipelines have been destroyed to put Germany down, Russia out and the rogue state US/KFC-AZAEL in. This has been clearly stated in 1949 by Lionel Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO as the pre-eminent goal of the North Atlantic Terrorist Organization.

Nowadays, the formulation of this NATO’s general policy might be slightly changed as follows : keep Russia down, China out and the rogue state US/KFC-AZAEL in.

BUT RUSSIA IS NOT GERMANY

AND CHINA IS RUSSIA’S COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGIC PARTNER OF COORDINATION FOR A NEW ERA

6- CHINA’S DECLARATION OF WAR TO THE US on Monday Feb 20, 2023 : The text “US hegemony & its perils”.
The Chinese Sovereigns traditionally offered to the World the exhaustive written enumeration of the depredations of the criminals to be destroyed before going to war.

In the present case concerning the US/KFC-AZAEL, the crimes have been grouped in 5 categories (for details, please refer to the text itself) :

    I- Political Hegemony - Throwing its weight around
    II- Military Hegemony - Wanton use of force
   III- Economic Hegemony - Looting and Exploitation
   IV- Technological Hegemony - Monopoly & Suppression
    V- Cultural Hegemony - Spreading False Narratives

7- March 20 to 22, 2023, President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow.
When leaving Moscow on March 22, 2023, His Excellency said to his dear friend President Vladimir Putin :

President Xi :  RIGHT NOW THERE ARE CHANGES  WE HAVEN'T SEEN FOR 100 YEARS, AND WE ARE THE ONES DRIVING THESE CHANGES TOGETHER.

 President Putin replied : I AGREE.

 President Xi : TAKE CARE PLEASE, DEAR FRIEND.

 President Putin : HAVE A SAFE TRIP.

8- April 6, 2023 : the diplomatic documents for the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement signed in Beijing. Less than a week later, a truce was agreed for the war in Yemen where Iran & Saudi Arabia were fighting a proxy war for years.

9- Orthodox Easter Sunday, 2023 : President Vladimir Putin received the Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu for discussing a closer Sino-Russian military cooperation.

10- Saturday June 3, 2023 : the USS Chung-Hoon, accompanied by the Canadian HMS Montreal, lost a brinkmanship type confrontation when challenged by the Chinese warship Suzhou in the Taiwan Straits. A week later, a US airplane has been chased away above the South China Sea by the Chinese airmen.

11- Janet Yellen kow-towing without success in Beijing concerning the USD bonds market.

12- July 18, 2023 : the 100-year-old Dr Henry Kissinger was received at the Villa no 5 of the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse (as in 1971) in Beijing and discussed warmly with President Xi Jinping about the China-US relation.

I would like to quote the last 4 paragraphs of the piece penned by Pepe Escobar published on July 21, 2023 by Sputnik.

The original title of the article was “The definitive 21st century war is on, AND IT’S NOT A WAR ON CHINA”.

I wished to adumbrate this first title because it reflects, according to my understanding, the reality. The second title, having been chosen, is “Neo-cons want war with China” and it expresses the desire of the most dangerous group of hubristic psychopaths living on Earth nowadays.

It is most interesting that it has been selected as the definitive title because it stresses rightly, ironically and powerfully, among other things, the utter unreality within which are living the members of the Western ruling class & the Western intelligentsia serving as their political advisors.

REALITY versus UNREALITY :

REALITY versus NARRATIVES :

REALITY versus SHADOWS.

Being able to see the reality as it is, is consubstantially part of belonging to the upper class, the ruling class. The utter lack in the Western upper class of a supposedly consubstantial quality to its members is a clear sign of utter degeneracy.

That degeneracy most probably coming from intrinsic biological factors because of [1] excessive inbreeding, [2] abuse of toxicomaniac substances, [3] neglect of self-discipline, [4] loss of true understanding of authentic classical, timeless values.

The centenary Henry Kissinger’s visit to China on July 19, 2023 was the occasion, so to speak, for a deep analysis of THE NEXUS of circumstances.

Which is, of the seriously accumulated flawed judgments…

…all, because of a toxic mix of hubris, fecklessness, corruption and utter idiocy (from the Greek word “idiotes” meaning living exclusively in one’s own bubble) coming from the predatory entity I refer to as the KFC-AZAEL (Kakistocratic Feudal Conglomerate of the Anglo-Zio-American Establishment).

As well, of the coalition of the last 3 Sovereign Civilizational States (China, Russia, Iran) & all the global partners willing & capable to participate to the Grand Endeavor of unremittingly eroding and ultimately annihilating the existing exploitative global system.

I consider that the last 4 paragraphs of the aforementioned article by Pepe Escobar offer the quintessential gist of geopolitical penetration and truly deep grasping of Universal History concerning the present global situation :

The title for the last 4 paragraphs is perfect :

*** Destroying the rules-based international order ***

And here are those last 4 paragraphs summarizing the fundamental geopolitical reality of our present world :

" The crucial difference today, compared to seven years ago, is that the US is incapable, per Brzezinski, to "take the lead in realigning the global power architecture in such a way that the violence (…) can be contained without destroying the global order." It's THE RUSSIA-CHINA PARTNERSHIP that is taking the lead - followed by the Global Majority - to contain and ultimately destroy the hegemonic "rules-based international order".

As the indispensable Michael Hudson has summarized it, the ULTIMATE question at this INCANDESCENT juncture is ** whether economic gains and efficiency ** will determine world trade, patterns and investments, or ** whether the post-industrial US/NATO economies ** will choose to end up looking like the rapidly repopulating and de-industrializing post-Soviet Ukraine and Baltic states or England.

So is THE WET DREAM OF A WAR ON CHINA going to change these geopolitical and geoeconomics imperatives ? Give us a - Thucydides - break. THE REAL WAR IS ALREADY ON - but certainly not one identified by Kissinger, Brzezinski and much less Luttwak and assorted US neocons.

Michael Hudson, once again, summarized it : when it comes to the economy, the US and EU "STRATEGIC ERROR OF SELF-ISOLATION FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD IS SO MASSIVE, SO TOTAL, THAT ITS EFFECTS ARE THE ** EQUIVALENT OF A WORLD WAR **."

*** Please meditate deeply on the numerous ramifications of the 4 powerfully worded paragraphs above ***

Speaking of wet dream, Sun Zi (544 BCE to c.495 BCE) considered that ‘the Supreme Warrior wins without fighting’. That can be interpreted on more than one level but if I simply read it as ‘the Supreme Warrior wins without having to fight a kinetic war’, it is already more than satisfactory, at least having the least possible of that dimension called ‘kinetic war’.

The first paragraph of Master Sun’s Art of War :

Master Sun said : The Art of War is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road to either safety or ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

Here is the article I wrote recently on ‘The Everlasting Civilization’ which might contribute to the understanding of the fundamental principles underlying the present practical maneuvers by the Chinese rulers & their advisors.

That the present US ruling class needs a 100 years old man to go to Beijing exploring the possible overtures in the China-US relation is a glaring sign of the utter emptiness and incompetence of its members. That’s for Henry Kissinger (1923- ). Moreover, I warmly recommend his 2011 book “On China”.

Concerning Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928-2017), let’s remind that his 1997 Magnum Opus was named :

The Grand Chessboard, American primacy and its imperatives.

In that 1997 book, Brzezinski summarized as ‘American primacy’ (or GAS : Global American System) the Anglo-Zio-American EstabLishment’ endeavor for global Empire.

Fifteen years later, in 2012, Z Brzezinski wrote a sequel to the Grand Chessboard : Strategic Vision. In this book, Brzezinski calibrated downwards the ambitions for the US and was capable of taking into account the new realities of China’s revival and of Russia’s return from the ashes, like 2 splendid reborn phoenixes.

Brzezinski was capable to change his mind but he died in 2017. His followers apparently are not of the same caliber.

Let’s not be neither complacent nor naive. The KFC-AZAEL will not go down without a serious fight. Let’s be aware of this reality and let’s be ready.

KFC-AZAEL DELENDA EST !!!

Quan

NATO RECALLS UKRAINE TROOPS FROM FRONT LINES

World Hal Turner 23 July 2023

At about 2:00 AM eastern US time Sunday morning, NATO instructed Ukraine to ABANDON THE FRONT LINES and have all troops “return to the cities immediately to seek shelter.”

Something BIG is apparently planned very soon!

Will NATO intervene, directly??

Will “peacekeeping forces” enter Western Ukraine to “freeze” the war???

Or will NATO simply outright attack??

Sadly, at present, 10:43 AM EDT Sunday, there are no apparent answers to __any__ of these questions.

Last night, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and US admiral James Stavridis stated NATO may be planning to attack Russian ships in the Black Sea! Russia will also be preparing for NATO to attack!  He said NATO ships should accompany grain carriers in the Black Sea and, if necessary, open fire in response to Russian warships.

Also last night, Ukraine President Zelensky publicly pleaded with NATO Secretary General to urgently convene Ukraine-NATO Council Against the background of the defeat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Odessa and the loss of NATO equipment.

Zelensky asked NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to urgently convene the Ukraine-NATO Council.

Stoltenberg heard the request of the vassal. He has called a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council for 26 July.

The official agenda of the future meeting is consultations on the latest developments in Ukraine and discussion of the transportation of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea.

What is apparent to everyone right now is that something very, VERY, big is about to take place.

Get right with God.

Bacon-Wrapped Turkey Breast

Imagine a turkey breast pounded thin and rolled up with stuffing and cranberry sauce. Nice, huh? Now imagine it wrapped in bacon. Guaranteed. Win.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup KRAFT Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 (1 3/4 pound) boneless skinless turkey breast, butterflied
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 (6 ounce) package STOVE TOP Lower Sodium Stuffing Mix for Chicken
• 3/4 cup canned whole berry cranberry sauce, divided
• 8 slices OSCAR MAYER Lower Sodium Bacon
• 6 fresh sage leaves

How to Butterfly the Turkey Breast: Place turkey on cutting board; carefully cut turkey horizontally in half, starting at thickest long side of breast, being careful not to cut all the way through to opposite side. Open like a book.

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Heat dressing in small nonstick skillet on medium heat.
3. Add onions; cook 10 minutes or until crisp-tender, stirring frequently. Cool.
4. Pound turkey to 1/2-inch thickness. Place turkey between 2 sheets of plastic wrap; pound with meat mallet or rolling pin to desired thickness.
5. Add water to stuffing mix in medium bowl; stir just until moistened.
6. Stir in onions; spoon down one long side of turkey.
7. Spoon 1/4 cup cranberry sauce next to stuffing.
8. Starting at covered side, roll up turkey breast; place, seam side down, on parchment-covered rimmed baking sheet.
9. Wrap bacon, with slices slightly overlapping, around turkey. (Turkey should be completely covered with bacon.)
10. Top with sage; press gently into bacon.
11. Spray foil with cooking spray; place over turkey, gently pressing foil onto bacon.
12. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes or until turkey is done (165 degrees F), uncovering after 30 minutes.
13. Serve with remaining cranberry sauce.
14. Garnish with additional fresh sage leaves before serving.

Prep: 15 min | Total: 1 hr 10 min | Yield: 8 servings

My Dad back in Italy from China, No one can Imagine What he Saw in China!

Confessions of a Commercial Airline Pilot

July 6, 2023

How much of a flight is automated and how much of it is actually you piloting?

It depends on the day and the person flying. I generally prefer to hand-fly the airplane up to about 10-15,000 feet before engaging the autopilot. Then you turn it off when you’re landing.

So on a day when it’s nice and you feel like flying, figure 30-40% of the flight is hand flown, the rest is autopilot. Some days you don’t feel like working as much and turn it on earlier and off later, but it’s always off for takeoff and landing.

Other people turn the autopilot on when you’re 600′ above the ground (our company standard minimum AP engagement altitude), then snap it off when we’re 200′ above the ground, so they fly on autopilot for 95% of the flight.

Do you know what all the buttons do? Have you pressed them all even once?

A) Yes, and if I forget they’re all labeled so…. hooray cliff notes!
B) No, there are several that never get pressed. In fact my company even has one button, the “High Power Schedule” button that kicks the engines up to their maximum possible thrust rating that we refer to as the “Get Fired” button.

Usually the ones that don’t get pressed are for emergency use only. Fortunately there are very few real life emergencies.

Is the audio quality of those transmissions really as bad as it seems in the videos? Because if it is, I cannot for the life of me see how you people understand each other.

The audio quality is a touch higher than on the recording. Most of us invest in high quality, noise dampening/cancelling headsets that run $600-1000 to assist in understanding. Further, most of the radio calls are very standard and we expect to hear the calls at certain points in the operation. if we have trouble understanding a specific word, we can generally either pick up what was said based on context. Additionally for any two way communications we will read back the precise instructions to ensure understanding. ATC then has the opportunity to correct us if we mis-heard.

Which commercial planes do you think is the best/worst designed from a pilot’s perspective? Are there any military or special-use craft that you think would convert well to commercial use?

Man, that’s not an easy one to answer. I don’t even know where to start on this one really. I haven’t flown enough different airliners to have a truly informed answer, but Boeing refusing to update the cockpit of the 737 due to type-rating issues hasn’t ever sat well with me personally.

Not that that particularly matters for anything and I’m sure there are thousands of 737 pilots who would tell me to shut the f*ck up, it’s fine how it is. The cockpit(s) of the Airbus line is so much better from a pilot perspective. It’s all sleek, and push button with actual space to move around, while the 737 cockpit is a direct rip from the even older 727 and is roughly the same size as my CRJ regional jet cockpit. Airplane generally flies just fine when there are competently trained pilots at the controls but that’s the best answer I can give you there.

The only military craft I could see having a viable civilian market (that doesn’t already HAVE a civilian market like the CH-47) would be the V-22 Osprey. The rest more prioritize power and performance (rightfully so) over efficiency, so making money with them becomes significantly harder. Companies like money. So… yeah.

Do you really have to eat a different meal than the co-pilot?

Haha I’m lucky if I get any food in-flight to begin with, let alone worrying if it’s different than what the other pilot is eating. I currently do not do the super long-haul cross-planet flights that entitle me to crew meals, so I can’t personally comment on whether that’s true or not. I think it’s up to each company’s individual policy.

What would be your one tip of advice for people terrified of flying?

Trust your flight crew’s judgement. If it were unsafe even a little bit we would not be getting on that airplane. We have families who love us too and aren’t trying to go die.

The bumps, the turbulence, can be scary to the uninitiated, but think of it more like driving over gravel or potholes in your car. You’re gonna bump around some and the ride is gonna suck, but you’re going to be fine. Up front, us pilots don’t wanna bump along any more than you are so we’re probably on the radio with ATC trying to find a smoother altitude to fly at. Some days though the ride sucks at all altitudes and all we can do is grin and bear it.

Hope that helps.

At what level of turbulence should we be worried? How bad does it have to get to become dangerous?

“Worried” is too strong a word, but when the captain advises the flight attendants to take their seats mid-flight, chances are we’re seeing a nasty looking storm out the front window. When you are seated, keep your seat belt on because sometimes things pop out of nowhere.

That said, I’ve flown through storms that LOOK like they’re going to be bumpy as shit and we don’t feel a thing. This is what happens 98% of the time.

Conversely there’s a rare phenomenon known as Clear Air Turbulence (CAT) that can be really severe but have zero indications it’s coming up until we’re deep in it. There was a Compass Airlines (Delta Connection) flight last summer I believe (maybe 2 summers ago?) that bounced the flight attendant off the ceiling of the plane and flipped a drink cart. In a situation like that, go ahead and be concerned, by all means. Believe me when I say we do our damnedest to avoid those sort of bumps.

Turbulence isn’t life threatening, it’s been a long time since I heard about a turbulence caused fatality or crash. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any in my lifetime. Injuries when it gets that bad are pretty common, usually from people that are up out of their seats when it happens.

I flew with a captain a while ago who got into Severe/Extreme turbulence (i.e. the top of the severity levels) while flying a smaller corporate plane. While he did land successfully and without injury (other than his passenger’s soiled pants), he said the plane was uncontrollable half the time and it took all of his skill to keep from breaking the plane. When they landed the tail was bent and the skin of the fuselage was rippled. It had to go back to the factory for 6-months+ worth of repairs.

I don’t tell you the previous story to scare you, but to highlight the fact that, even with those extreme weather conditions and a damaged airplane, it landed safely and everyone survived. The 757 airliner behind him flew through the same weather and also had to do an emergency landing because people go bounced around pretty badly (bruises, sprained ankles, etc) but that plane was not damaged like the small one was. Again, zero fatalities, plane landed safely.

These planes are built to survive extreme conditions. Like I’ve said in other questions, we are right up there with you and will not put anyone in a situation that threatens lives. Bottom line: the “Fasten Seatbelts” sign isn’t necessarily legally binding in the air like it is on the ground, but when it is on, you’re strongly advised to listen to it.

I often hear pilots say “we will make it up in the air” when there has been a short delay taking off. That indicates to me that you normally aren’t running at maximum speed (I’m guessing for fuel savings). How much faster could you go though? Let’s say it’s a 4 hour flight, could you get there in 3?

Basically, though not that much time. We can maybe do +/- 20 minutes on a 3 hour flight depending on conditions. It’s true, we don’t generally operate at maximum speed, and that is for fuel savings concerns. Our flight plan from out dispatchers has a planned flying speed and gives us a fuel load based on those calculations (with some wiggle room). And it’s not that we don’t HAVE the fuel to fly faster, it’s that the company makes less money if we burn through a bunch of extra gas we didn’t need to trying to make up 5 minutes. Gotta balance the concerns.

Other things we can do is ask Air Traffic Control for short cuts on our planned route of flight. From Point A to Point B there are generally proscribed routes of travel to make ATC’s job of tracking us easier. They’re generally pretty efficient, but not always the most direct route possible. Sometimes we can get the short cuts, if ATC isn’t very busy, sometimes not. We can usually save ~10 minutes with more efficient routing.

When the airline says my plane is delayed because of “mechanical issues”, what does that really mean?

99.9% of the time it literally means something broke and maintenance has to come out and fix it. Now that doesn’t mean something IMPORTANT broke, but if something is broken and it’s not in the aircraft logbook, it is literally illegal for us to go flying. Even if the door for an overhead bin breaks, its gotta get written up and entered on the aircraft dispatch release before we’re legal to go fly.

Usually it’s something like a fault cropped up in the electronics, maybe the temperature sensor for the wing anti-ice system threw out an error message and the mechanic is gonna come, pull a circuit breaker and reset the system, write it up as fixed, and boom. Done.

Buuuut, that takes time to call dispatch, get switch over to the maintenance desk and relay the problem to them. Then they have them call the company mechanics if we broke in a base, or draw up a quick contract with the local maintainers to come over and service the plane if we’re at an out-station. All of this takes time, usually for something really stupid that we honestly COULD go fly with if it weren’t illegal. Very rarely is it a serious maintenance issue. There’s an old pilot adage: problems on the ground don’t get better in the air.

If you’re ever worried about a plane coming off of maintenance, just remember: us pilots are on that exact same airplane with you. If it weren’t safe, we wouldn’t be getting on that plane. We love our jobs but do not have a death wish.

People always say pilot get paid by a lot (like enough to get u rich). Is that really true?

The simple answer to “do pilots make a lot of money” is….. eventually, if you’re lucky. Our pay is based on flight time. We’re only getting paid when the main cabin door is shut, until it opens again at the end of the flight.

All of that time preparing the airplane for flight, greeting all you lovely passengers as you come aboard, cleaning up the plane at the end of the flight once everyone gets off, sitting around the airport waiting for our next flight to start? We’re not getting paid for those times.

Airlines fall under the Railway Labor Act here in the US and have hourly pay rates for Captains, First Officers, and Flight Attendants, so the more we work, the more we get paid. Most airlines have a minimum monthly guarantee, i.e. you’ll get paid no less than 75 hours worth of pay, whether or not you actually get scheduled to fly that much. Pay rates are individual to each airline but a rough rule of thumb is a Captain makes twice as much as a First Officer who makes twice as much as a Flight Attendant. It’s not exact, but it’s relatively close to reality. As such captains are often unofficially obligated to buy the first round of drinks on the overnight and tip the airport shuttle drivers. haha.

Pilot pay has increased substantially since 2009 when new regulations went into effect, effectively shrinking the pool of available pilot candidates. They raised the airline pilot requirement from 250 hours of flight experience to 1500 hours of flight experience, a 600% increase to the minimum requirement to airline ENTRY LEVEL jobs. Prior to that, it wasn’t uncommon for a regional airline first officer to make $16,000/year and be on food stamps. Currently in the US, a regional airline a first officer can expect to make $40-50,000/year. A regional airline captain can make (roughly) $75-125,000/year depending on how many years seniority they have on the pay scale. The “big” airlines like Delta, American, FedEx, UPS, United, etc have much higher pay scales than the regionals and as such are the end-goals of most of us pilots.

Keep in mind though, these high-end pay scales are the…. “payback” for lack of a better term for years, decades really, of extremely bad pay and high cost of entry int o the aviation field. To become a pilot it’s not at all uncommon for people to go $50-100,000 in debt. Personally I got my pilots license with $57,000 of student loan debt. Then to accumulate 1500 hours of flight time most people have to work as flight instructors, pipeline inspectors, do banner towing along beaches, etc. Those jobs…. don’t pay a lot. Most pilots at that level can’t afford a house, or contribute to a savings or retirement account, so the high pay at the peak of the industry is designed to offset those early career detriments.

Bottom line answer: yes, you can get rich as a pilot if you stick with it long enough, keep your record clean, and have luck on your side. It’s less common, but for a large part of your airline career you can live a pretty comfortable, sometimes budgeted lifestyle. Hope that helps.

What effect does it REALLY have if I don’t put my device in airplane mode?

It can cause interference with our radios, both audio and navigational. On rare occasions we’ll have a lot of static on the radio, we’ll stop and make the announcement to remind everyone their phone needs to be in airplane mode and that if that doesn’t solve the problem we’ll have to return to the gate for maintenance. Reeeeeaaally quick the interference goes away. Go figure.

You want your phone in airplane mode too. Once we climb above ~5000 feet your phone isn’t gonna pick up any cell signal anyways so it’s just gonna spend the rest of the flight draining your battery searching for cell service.

Do you let young kids take pictures with you in the cockpit?

Absolutely. We all remember when WE were those kids. You’d be hard pressed to find the grumpy, crusty pilot who’s gonna pass up the chance to share our love of aviation with a kid and maybe create a life changing memory.

We can’t have people in the cockpit anymore during flight (thanks 9/11), but talk to the flight attendants about it during initial boarding, or talk to them in flight about doing it after everyone else gets off.

What’s your opinion on people who applause after landing?

I know, I know other passengers hate that and think they’re fools, but… I mean, most of us pilots have huge egos from doing what we do. We’re up front there probably applauding ourselves in our own heads. Either that or cringing at how we fucked up that landing, better do better next time. So.. whatever, thanks for the support I guess. Haha

Do they give you “Ladies and gentlemen, ah, this is your, ah Captain speaking” PA lessons?

Well ahhhhh, you have to pick your spots ahhhh, so that everyone knows you’re still speaking ahhhhh while you look for more pointless information to tell everyone like ahhhh the wind speed and direction at the destination.

Are all pilots required to wear aviators?

Yes. It’s hidden deep within federal aviation regulations 14 CFR 121.682 and all pilots are briefed on it when they’re in their new hire initial training.

He’s EXPOSING the secret alien interrogation program

Interesting. Relax. Do not get too caught up in this. But very interesting.

At least it confirms what I have been saying all along.

.

14 People Reveal How They Found Out Their Partners Were Cheating

July 20, 2023

1. My wife tried calling and didn’t hang up once it went to voicemail. She accidentally left a 2:45 VM. The VM consisted of her and her BF talking shit about me and how much happier she was with him.

At the time I was home with our kids and I thought she was 1,800 miles away to be with her dying father. Two years later we are divorced and her father is still alive.

2. She needed a new phone so I put it in my name since I was working, 2 hours after leaving the store and having lunch with me joking about how excited she was to get married I found a photoreel full of pictures she had been exchanging with her ex whilst transferring her stuff to her new phone.

I put 2 and 2 together and opened her text inbox and surprise! She had been texting him for months and fucking him for a few weeks.

3. I counted the pictures.

This was in 2000, before everyone had a camera on their phone and you had to get your holiday snaps developed at the Walgreens photo lab.

She brought home the pictures of her vacation to see her “old high school friend” in Vegas, but there was something missing. See, back in the day the rolls of film were made up of exposures of 12, 24, 36 pics, etc. depending on the film you bought.

I went through the photos and it didn’t add up. Literally. The 24 exposure roll only had 18 pics. Eventually I found the remaining photos…her and the new boyfriend looking happy.

4. My super genius ex wife bitched about the cost of our joint cell phone bill. She told me I’m using it too much. I never used it except to call her phone which was free. So I looked over the bill and found the number to the dude she was cheating with.

5. iMessage linked to her computer. I was on her computer buying stuff off Amazon and she was sitting on the couch, feet from me, texting her ex. He was trying to get her to send him nudes and they were reminiscing about previous encounters. He was bragging about how he made her “leg shake” all the while I was watching the conversation in real time, right next to her. My adrenaline kicked in and I simply closed the computer and left the house without saying a word. This was over a year ago and I’m still fighting her for custody of our children.

6. She became more and more distant. Not just that, but also indifferent. She just stopped caring and it showed. I caught her because she claimed she was working OT, but her pay never reflected it. One day I got out of work early after a machine broke down in the department. I didn’t tell her. When I came home, I caught her red handed with someone in our bed.

7. I had a feeling for a while, it was always denied of course – directly and through a massive amount of gaslighting. Ultimately, the other woman was also married and her husband called me at work (found me via LinkedIn). Took everything I had to walk to my car to cry in private.

8. Back when cell phones had limited minutes, I got notified that we were over our limit. Checked the last bill and nothing but her and her boss talking at all hours of the day. Then she stupidly left her e-mail open on my computer and I got to read how he enjoyed touching her boobs a lot.

9. Just got on a flight in London headed to Vegas. Sitting next to my GF and she wants to show me something she has planned for the trip so gets out her phone.

It opens to the Messages and shows a chat with a guy (I know him) saying how much she is gonna miss him and how she doesn’t wanna go away with me anyway.

The doors close on the plane and that was a really fucking fun 10-11hrs…

10. I know this is cliche and I’ve definitely bitched about it before, but coming home from a 12 MONTH deployment to a BLACK baby when we’re both white were strike one and two. Strike three was telling me she had black relatives (whom I’ve never met) so that could be what happened, sure. Doesn’t matter what excuse You have there isn’t a magical 12 month gestation period. Makes me very fucking angry.

11. The dude told me. We used to go to school together. Saw him in Facebook and requested friendship. He asked me how I was doing and I told him that I was great. Girl and I were about to celebrate our anniversary. He apologized to me and said he had to tell me that they had been fucking for the last week. Said he didn’t know we were together and I believed him. He sent me screenshots of pages of text as proof. She got called out by the both of us and we are still very good friends, he and I. Fuckin lying skank.

12. I woke up in the middle of the night when she was in the bathroom. Used her phone as a light. Saw texts from her ex about how good it felt to cum inside her the day before.

13. She forgot to end the call, you know, press the red button. I heard them talking about who was going to shower first.

14. She was in the toilet. Her phone flashed up. The message notification read “Did you tell him?”.

Apparently the message was about something completely different, but after I bluffed her into thinking I know more than I do – a name and that something’s up, she “confessed”.

10 years relationship destroyed. No turning back. Easier to build up trust with a new person the. with someone that cheated on you. And in long term relationships, marriage, you have to trust each other.

The Simpsons news! War between America and China

You ARE aware that the Simpsons television show has been able to predict the future, right?

https://youtu.be/vVz7bS6cQs0

Why do you think China hasn’t invaded Taiwan yet?

Chinese don’t like war, not just for moral reasons, but because they are very costly and wasteful. Human lives are lost, families are wrecked, individuals are traumatized, buildings are destroyed, and deep ill-feeling is created.

Chinese especially don’t like the idea of killing other Chinese, even if many Taiwanese don’t consider themselves to be Chinese. Killing other Chinese is something which should be avoided until all other ways of resolution have been exhausted, and this is true for Taiwan.

Moreover, reconstruction costs would be huge, and the national treasury would take a major hit lasting years. If China attacked without provocation, the United States would be the first country to call for a boycott of China and Chinese goods, which would hurt the economy for years. The costs would run into the hundreds of billions of yuan.

On a scale of 1 (Poor) to 10 (Excellent) how do you rate the USA in the effectiveness of their foreign policies to your country and why?

Zero.

The U.S. has lost every conceivable element of respect by must South East Asian people for being hypocritical and obnoxious, power that is bent in trouble making and war mongering which is what we do not want.

The U.S. must move from their moral high horse that no one buys and much less believe. To South East Asia we see the U.S. as the barbarous nation that murdered up to 3 million Vietnamese civilians and carpet bomb Manila to murder up to 1 million mostly Filipinos in its war against the Japanese. We know that the U.S. has a hand in murdering another 3 million anti communist in Indonesia.

The U.S. has completely and totally lost its plot in South East Asia. Apart from Singapore who is more interested in US money than US behaviour the U.S. do not have any influence here. Talking bad and talking down in China has turn off the South East Asian officials. To U.S. China has been our big neighbour for 5000 years yet we are still our own sovereign nation!

We saw what happened in the U.S. that begin with 13 East Coast states to stealing 37 more states till Pacific coast in a mere century! We appreciate that China in spite from actually way stronger than U.S. left us alone. The U.S. trying to sow fear about China is simply not believable at all. If anything. It showed the U.S. hypocrisy and it manipulative nature.

Sitrep

August 2023

There are three levels.

[1] Geo-political

In flux. The single ruling (American / UK) nation as a dominant entity is over. The world is in a situation of metamorphosis.

The duration of this period of change is unknown. However, a rapid change is suggested.

Most of the world (the Global South) are aligning with the China-Russian axis.

This suggests either [1a] a world consisting of two Geo-political axes or [1b] a world led by the Russia-China alignment.

This is a “bumpy road”. It may get “hot”, or “frosty cold”. But the changes will continue for a spell.

[2] Global Economic

Of the two emerging powers; (USA, Russia-China), the Western-led axes is remarkably poor. While the Eastern axes, (Russia – China) is powerful, wealthy and leading in most every indicator of value.

This trend is continuing in the two vector paths. One up. One down.

No one knows when the West will hit bottom.

The East will continue to go ballistic and there is no indication that the trend will plateau.

[3] Galactic

Various entities are observing these changes in the earth centrist sphere.

Domain is very busy right now, but the impression is that all is proceeding as it should. Medium bads only. No big bads are indicated.

Some very powerful entities have attempted to alter the “environment” to their personal benefit for one reason or the other. Domain has been patching away these efforts towards “full body repair”.

A period of stabilization and calm should be evident by the end of this decade.

Return To Green Acres (Full)

Ugh. So much sad and depressing stuff. How about something light, cheerful and happy for a change. This is my special gift for today. -MM

Today’s special treat! Happy times!

Sure they are older, by about 30 years, but it’s a fun time for all. Silly. Yeah. Not serious. Excellent! The stuff about Trump is pure gold.